LNG

Dec 28 (LNGJ) - The 174,000 cubic metres capacity carrier “British Sponsor” was scheduled to berth with a US cargo on December 28 at the Isle of Grain LNG import terminal on the Medway-Thames estuary, located about 45 miles southeast of London, according to the Thamesport authorities. The shipment was lifted on December 12 from the Freeport export plant on Quintana Island in Texas.

Dutch firm Boskalis Subsea Services said it completed a multi-million-dollar contract awarded by French energy group Perenco to support a pipeline and gas lifespan extension project in the UK’s Southern North Sea in competition to liquefied natural gas deliveries.

The London-based Baltic Exchange, the main independent global source of maritime market information for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative shipping contracts, has named LNG Hub Singapore as the leading global shipping centre.

Calor, the UK's leading retail supplier of liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with 350,000 commercial customers located off the main gas grid, is building up its loading volumes from National Grid Plc’s import terminal on the Isle of Grain in Kent.

Calor has just announced the loading of its 1,200th LNG truck, which equates to more than 24,000 tonnes of LNG, supplied across the length and breadth of the UK.

“The truck-loading facility on the Isle of Grain, which is located 43 miles east of London, opened in 2015, and Calor was the first LNG supplier to load and deliver to its extensive UK LNG customer base, which ranges from large off-grid industrial applications (including food & beverage and pharmaceutical) to vehicle refuelling, to name a few,” said Calor.

Grain LNG also offers reloads, trans-shipments and other services such as reloading road tankers and ISO containers.

The National Grid subsidiary additionally has plans for a marine breakbulk facility.

Mark Gilks, Calor LNG National Account Manager, said his company was committed to delivering fuel to its customers, especially throughout the current crisis as the UK uses cleaner and greener fuel sources.

“By using LNG instead of more polluting fuels such as oil and diesel derivatives, we have helped UK businesses cut their CO2 emissions by up to 25 percent over the past five years, based on the loadings from the Isle of Grain alone,” said Gilks.

“LNG-powered trucks have comparable performance to diesel vehicles in terms of power, acceleration and cruising speed, but can cut CO2 by between 10 percent and 20 percent, dependeing on duty cycle and vehicle type,” he added.

“LNG also takes up 600 times less space than conventional natural gas making it easy to transport and store compactly in its liquid form,” stated Gilks.

The Calor executive said that the company was grateful to its operational team who have kept on going, particularly over the last few months.

“We’re incredibly proud of what we have achieved and keen to see where the next five years will take us, as we do our bit to promote the use of cleaner energy sources nationwide,” explained Gilks.

The Isle of Grain facility is the largest import terminal in Europe. It has also just launched the second phase of an on-going open season during which the market is invited to make bids with less than a month before the deadline.

Grain LNG is offering up to 300 gigawatt hours per day (7.2 million tonnes per annum of LNG) of redelivery capacity and 380,000 cubic metres of associated storage, to be made available from mid-2025.

An expansion will increase the size of the terminal, situated on the Thames-Medway estuary, to about 1.2 million cubic metres.