Wood Group Secures Greek LNG Feed

UK Wood Group has won the front-end engineering design (Feed) contract for the Alexandroupolis floating LNG import terminal to be built offshore northeast Greece, it said June 27.

The project will create a new natural gas gateway to the markets of south eastern and central Europe, it said. The region is now heavily dependent on pipeline gas, particularly Russian imports.

“Our subsea capabilities combined with the engineering proficiency of our people and cost effective technical solutions, position us well to deliver this milestone European project,” said Wood Group in its statement.

Artist's impression of Orfeas, the planned Alexandroupolis FSRU  (Photo credit: Gastrade)

Wood Group’s subsea team will perform the design and engineering definition for the Alexandroupolis floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) and its sub-systems which will support the final investment decision for the project, planned for late 2017. 

The Feed work will include a docking system and other subsea work. However the FSRU vessel itself is owned by shipowner GasLog and is to be provided under an agreement signed last year. GasLog owns 20% of the overall Alexandroupolis project developer Gastrade, a private utility company.

2nd Greek LNG terminal

Although Greece's existing onshore LNG import terminal at Revithoussa near Athens some 300 km to the southwest has operated since the year 2000, the new floating Alexandroupolis terminal could introduce new pricing methods into the illiquid oil-price formula-led market.

Greece consumed 2.8bn m³ and Bulgaria 3bn m³ in 2016, according to the recently published BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, which adds that 2.5bn m³ of Greek supply was imported from Russia. It's understood almost all Bulgaria's gas came from Russia too.

The 6bn m³/yr capacity new project is defined by the European Commission as a project of common interest, entitling it to receive some funding. It will bring gas into Bulgaria through the planned Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB), and into the Balkans more generally as well as the planned TransAdriatic Pipeline (TAP) which finishes in southern Italy.

Wood Group said the contract "brings our global expertise and technical solutions to a new client and we look forward to working with Gastrade as the main engineering contractor for developing this Feed."

William Powell