Small-Scale LNG at Snohvit and Klaipeda
Two small-scale LNG initiatives launched last month at Hammerfest in northern Norway and Klaipeda in Lithuania.
Skangas said October 27 it successfully completed the first small-scale LNG loading at the Statoil-operated Snohvit liquefaction plant at Melkoya island, near Hammerfest, ten days earlier on October 17. Statoil supplied the 100 GWh (9.3mn m3 gas) cargo to Skangas’ vessel Coral Energy. The LNG was then shipped to Skangas’ terminal in Lysekil in western Sweden. The October 17 loading at the Snohvit plant was done at the large-scale jetty that was built for ocean-going LNG carriers ten times the size of Coral Energy which holds 15,600 m3 of LNG.
Statoil and Skangas also conducted the first small scale LNG loading at Lithuania’s Klaipeda terminal in early January 2017. Scandinavian leading small-scale LNG distributor Skangas is 70%-owned by Finnish utility Gasum.
Meanwhile Klaipedos Nafta (KN), operator of that Lithuanian terminal, inaugurated its small-scale onshore LNG reloading station October 27. Trial operations and commissioning works will though continue until end-2017. The reloading station, which consists of five 1,000 m3 tanks, is intended to supply marine bunkering customers in the Baltic region, and for use by trucks that run on LNG, or supply the fuel to remote consumers.
KN CEO Mindaugas Jusius noted that the first commissioning cargo was delivered by Shell, while the first LNG trucks were despatched to Poland in late October. The reloading station was built by a consortium comprising German-Lithuanian PPS Pipeline Systems and Czech firm Chart Ferox, following a contract award by KN in February 2017.
Three years ago KN and shipowner Hoegh LNG opened the former Soviet Union's first large LNG import terminal at Klaipeda, enabling the three Baltic Republics to diversify their gas imports. Previously all three were wholly reliant on expensive Russian gas; now Gazprom often undercuts LNG on price.
Mark Smedley