Second Qatari Tanker Reaches Poland for Commissioning

Poland’s commissioning LNG terminal took its second delivery February 8, with Qatargas’ Al Nuaman Q-Flex bringing 210,000 m³ to Swinoujscie.

The LNG was delivered to state-owned PGNiG by agreement with Polskie LNG. The LNG will be vaporised and injected into the Polish grid to reach end-users across the country, PGNiG said February 10.

The first supply of LNG for the terminal commissioning was delivered December 11. It took eight days to unload the ship, and regasification and grid injection started in early January. This delivery is expected to take three days to unload. Commissioning is due to complete in the first half of the year.

The delivery volumes are in line with the schedule provided by the general contractor of the terminal, PGNiG said.

When all the operational tests are completed, the permit to operate the terminal is obtained and the terminal is officially accepted from the general contractor, the infrastructure will be ready to handle commercial deliveries.

The terminal in Swinoujscie was designed to accept and re-gasify LNG and deliver up to 5bn m³/year to the Polish transmission system. As part of the project, a new 3 km-long breakwater was built and the wharf was developed to have a mooring system able to handle LNG tankers with a capacity from 120,000 m³ to 217,000 m³. It also has two storage tanks each of 160,000 m³ together with regasification units and an 85-km pipeline to Szczecin.

The LNG terminal in Swinoujscie is the only facility of this size in northern, central and eastern Europe, PGNiG says. Its nearest rival is the floating storage and regasification unit Independence, moored at Klaipeda, Lithuania, which can take just under 4bn m³/yr but which runs at a fraction of that now that Gazprom has lowered its price.

William Powell