Spanish-French consortium of Sener and Vinci subsidiary Cobra have landed the engineering, procurement and construction contract for an LNG regasification terminal to be built in the German port of Brunsbüttel on the North Sea
The regasification terminal, once completed, will be the first in Germany, and a statement from Sener and Cobra said the project was being fast-tracked for completion.
"Under current conditions, it is realistic to expect completion in 2026. However, all parties involved are working to further accelerate the project in compliance with all licensing and state aid requirements," the statement said.
Germany has been working to find replacements for Russian natural gas volumes since Russia began its war against Ukraine and western sanctions on Russian energy followed.
Germany is heavily dependent on piped gas from Russia and currently has no LNG terminals. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the announcement of western sanctions against Russian energy, the German federal government passed the LNG Acceleration Act to shorten approval procedures for LNG terminals.
Located in the north of the country, at the mouth of the Elbe River in the North Sea, the Brunsbüttel regasification plant will have two 165,000-m3 storage tanks and the capacity to produce up to 8Bn m3 per annum of natural gas, which Sener and Cobra said can be expanded to at least 10Bn m3.
The terminal will be equipped with two jetties, unloading arms, storage tanks, systems for regasification and gas emissions, a boil-off gas recovery system, a flare stack, auxiliary systems, and a series of buildings specially designed for the operations.
The terminal will provide various services: loading and unloading carriers, storing LNG, regasification, injection into the German natural gas grid and distributing LNG via tankers and railway tanker wagons.
"The new terminal will offer an alternative to the gas imported by land. In this respect, the company German LNG Terminal GmbH has indicated this terminal ’will make a significant contribution to the security of energy supply in Germany and Europe’," the Sener-Cobra statement said.
The two companies did not disclose the value of the contract, saying, "The collaboration is worth a substantial investment and comprises a first tranche of preliminary work lasting around 9 to 15 months, with some construction work already taking place in parallel over a period of around 42 months."
About 50% of the country’s natural gas has been supplied by Russia in recent years, and as a result, Germany has enacted emergency energy measures, announcing multiple LNG import terminals, including four based on FSRUs, since the start of the war.
In April, the German Finance Ministry approved spending €2.94Bn (US$3.09Bn) to fund the FSRUs, with Uniper and RWE signing 10-year charter deals on behalf of the German Government to secure two FSRUs each from Höegh LNG and Dynagas.
Two Höegh LNG 170,000-m3 FSRUs will be deployed in Germany, one at Wilhelmshaven and another at Brunsbüttel as the country’s first LNG import hubs.
The 5Bn m3 Höegh LNG FSRU is scheduled to arrive at the turn of the year. However, due to the grid capacities, only about 3.5Bn m3 (about 4% of Germany’s gas requirements) of natural gas per year can then be transported via this pipeline before the construction of a new 55-km pipeline is completed.
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