Page 13 - EurOil Week 05 2022

EurOil INVESTMENT EurOil

Gastrade reaches FID on

Alexandroupolis LNG

GREECE GREECE’S Gastrade announced on January November, the European Commission approved
28 that it had made a final investment decision the purchase of interests in the LNG project by
The floating LNG (FID) on the Alexandroupolis LNG import these companies, as well as by Greek business-
project will import up terminal. woman Asimina-Eleni Copelouzou, clearing
to 5.5 bcm per year The floating LNG (FLNG) project, off the these investments of competition concerns.
of gas. coast of Alexandroupolis, will have the capac- In its statement, Gastrade noted that gas
ity to import up to 5.5bn cubic metres per year from the project would be able to reach the
of gas. It will be Greece’s second LNG import wider Southeastern European region, including
terminal. Romania, Serbia and North Macedonia, as well
The floating storage and regasification unit as Moldova and Ukraine. The comments come
(FSRU) is anticipated to enter service by the amid heightened fears over potential disruption
end of 2023 and around half of its regasifica- of Russian gas supply to Europe amid escalating
tion capacity has already been contracted. The tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
facility will be linked to the Greek gas trans- Meanwhile, the Interconnector Greece Bul-
mission system via a 28-km pipeline. Once garia (IGB) pipeline is also nearing start-up,
the gas reaches the system, it can be shipped and is now due to enter service in July following
on to markets beyond Greece, including Bul- delays during construction. The 3 bcm per year
garia, which is a participant in Alexandroup- project will help increase the region’s gas inter-
olis LNG through gas transmission operator connectivity further still. It will allow Bulgaria
Bulgartransgaz. to import gas from Greek LNG terminals and
Along with Bulgartransgaz, Cypriot LNG potentially also supplies delivered via the South-
carrier operator GasLog and Greek gas compa- ern Gas Corridor (SGC) from Azerbaijan, help-
nies DESFA and DEPA Commercial are also par- ing Sofia to reduce its dependence on Russian
ticipants in the Alexandroupolis project. In late gas. ™

PERFORMANCE

Shell profits soar on high

oil, gas prices

UK SHELL reported a sharp upswing in profits less than half this amount, $3.5bn, in 2021.
in 2021, and the back of soaring commodities Shell also shaved $23bn of its net debt over
Shell described it as a prices, according to results published on Febru- the course of the year, to $52.6bn.
“momentous year”. ary 3. Adjusted earnings reached $6.39bn in the
Full-year adjusted earnings came to fourth quarter, up from $393mn a year earlier
$19.29bn, Shell said, up from $4.85bn in the pre- and $4.13bn in the previous three months.
vious year and surpassed a forecast of $17.8bn Its integrated gas business performed best,
based on a Refinitiv analyst poll. In the fourth earning $4.05bn versus $1.1bn a year earlier.
quarter, adjusted earnings reached $6.4bn. In second place was its upstream operations,
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden described 2021 which delivered $2.83bn, up from a loss of
as a “momentous year” for the company, ena- $748mn.
bling it to be “bolder and move faster.” Oil product sales generated $555mn versus
“We delivered very strong financial perfor- $540mn in the final quarter of 2020, while chem-
mance in 2021, and our financial strength and icals suffered a loss of $42mn compared with a
discipline underpin the transformation of our $381mn profit.
company,” van Beurden said. Shell’s strong numbers come as the major set-
On the back of the strong result, Shell tles into new offices in the UK after moving from
announced it would undertake a $8.5bn share the Netherlands as part of a corporate overhaul.
buyback programme in the first half of 2022, and The company also suspended its two-tier share
expected to raise its dividend by 4% to $0.25 per system last month, introducing a single share
share in the first quarter. Its share buybacks were line instead. ™

Week 05 03•February•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P13