LNG Croatia Picks FSRU Supplier
State import terminal developer LNG Croatia said November 9 it has decided to charter a floating receiving unit from Golar Power, the joint venture of shipowner Golar LNG and New York fund Stonepeak.
LNG Croatia said it received three bids in its procurement tender for such a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) and related services, bidding for which closed October 5. The other bids were from Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines and Greece’s Maran Gas Maritime. The state developer said it judged Golar Power’s bid to be the most economically advantageous bid.
It said that Golar Power has offered to convert Golar Viking - a 2005-built LNG carrier – into an FSRU with 2.6bn m3/yr regasification capacity (0.3mn m3/hr) and 140,000 m3 of LNG storage capacity at a cost of €159.6mn ($181mn); the annual charter rate that LNG Croatia will pay was not disclosed.
Subject to a final Open Season procedure now underway closing December 20, plus the adoption of a final investment decision (FID) on the project, Golar Viking is expected to be delivered to Krk island in Croatia during October 2020 and be fully operational by January 1 2021. Signing of the charter, conditional on that FID, is expected shortly after November 15.
LNG Croatia's Open Season has been postponed repeatedly during the course of 2018. So whilst the selection of an FSRU provider is a positive development, given that the project has already been promised an EU grant covering more than a quarter of its estimated cost, many observers will only see that this project is going ahead once the FID is taken and conversion of the ship and port gets underway.
Because the tourist industry objects to any use of chlorine, regasification will work in the open loop system so that, during warming seawater intake and discharge, the FSRU will not use electro-chlorination.