LNG

Jul 22 - Belgium's Port of Antwerp is calling for tenders to design and build a new LNG bunkering station for barges. The new design must enable trucks, as well as barges, to fill up with LNG at a permanent bunkering station at the port from 2016.

The project will be partly subsidized by the LNG Master Plan for the Rhine-Main-Danube, as Antwerp Port Authority is partnering with Basel, Mannheim, Rotterdam and Strasbourg.

In the race for market share in Asia, British Columbia need to be more assertive: Delays beyond 2024 risk complete competitive loss of market entry for Canadian LNG exporters, warns Michal Moore, director of energy policy at the University of Calgary.

With a shorter pre-FID and construction schedule, lower capital expenditure and flexibility to move it around, barge-type FLNG projects with a capacity 1 to 1.5 mtpa of having some significant advantages over large floating or land-based liquefaction projects, according to Øivin Iversen, CEO of Höegh FLNG.

Anticipating the end of BG Singapore Gas Marketing's current quasi monopoly on LNG sales in Singapore, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) has started the selection process to license two importers for the time when the city states' gas demand will rise beyond 3 mtpa.

Jul 21 - The $18.5 billion Santos-led Gladstone LNG project, in which Total and Petronas each have has a 27.5% stake, needs more gas to get off the ground, according to Total's head of upstream oil and gas, Yves-Louis Darricarrere.

"We need and we are ready to buy (more gas) but there is a price limit and it is not really economical (at the moment)," he told Australian media, raising doubt on whether the GLNG project's two trains on Curtis Island can be realised realized as planned.
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Arrow, which has abandoned plans for a stand-alone LNG plant at Gladstone, had been courted by GLNG but no deal is imminent. As an alternative to buying third party gas, GLNG was looking at acquiring more Queensland exploration ground, Darricarrere said.

Californian project developer SCT&E LNG has tripled volumes in its Free Trade Application (FTA) to the Department of Energy from 4 to 12 mtpa of LNG to be exported from Monkey Island, Louisiana.

Corpus Christi Liquefaction, a Cheniere Energy's subsidiary, has agreed to sell Électricité de France about 0.38 mtpa of LNG upon startup of Train 2 of the liquefaction facility being developed near Corpus Christi, Texas. Sales will increase to once Train 3 starts operation as early as 2019.

Project partners in North America rush to bring LNG to market before the Pacific Basin will be awash with Australian cargoes. However, scope for a second wave of projects is limited down under once the ongoing dozen projects are completed, the Economist Intelligence Units' lead energy analyst, Peter Kiernan, told LNG Journal. 

July 17 - US construction company Bechtel has delivered and installed all modules for the first of two LNG trains at the GLNG Project on Curtis Island, Queensland.

Train 1 is made up of 82 modules that were built at a Bechtel-managed module yard facility in the Philippines and transported to Curtis Island over the past 19 periods. Work on the modules for Train 2 is still underway and scheduled to be delivered and installed later his year.

As Asian utility buyers have covered their summer LNG demand, Qatargas is diverting more cargoes to the UK, adding length to an oversupplied market which is likely to exacerbate the 28% drop in gas prices at the NBP since April.