Page 8 - Euroil Week 18 2020

EurOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT EurOil
Poland signs contract with Italy’s Saipem to lay Baltic Pipe
POLAND
The contract is worth $66.5mn.
ITALIAN oil and gas engineering company Saipem will lay the Baltic Pipe on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Poland’s state-owned gas grid operator Gaz-System said on May 4.
The €2.1bn Baltic Pipe will carry gas from the Norwegian Sea – where another Polish state-controlled company PGNiG has explora- tion and production concessions – via Denmark to Poland, starting in 2022. The pipeline is a key gas infrastructure project Poland needs in order to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports.
Warsaw currently has a long-term gas supply contract with Russia’s Gazprom that expires the same year the Baltic Pipe will go online. Poland keeps hinting the contract will not be renewed.
Gazprom recently lost arbitration over prices it had been charging Poland for its gas.
Warsaw has long seen its dependence on Russian gas as a liability and with the Baltic Pipe in operation in less than two years from now, it is about to have the infrastructure to reduce or evenendit.
Since 2015, Poland has operated an LNG ter- minal in the western town of Swinoujscie, taking in gas under contracts with Qatar or the US. The
terminal’s capacity is currently 5bn cubic metres (bcm) a year but it is being expanded to 7.5 bcm. Poland also aims to build another LNG ter- minal in Gdansk that will handle 4 bcm of LNG,
starting in 2025.
An estimated 4 bcm of domestic produc-
tion can be added to imports from non-Russian sources Poland expects to secure, covering its demand for around 17 bcm of natural gas annu- ally by 2022, of which two-thirds is currently covered by Gazprom.
The Baltic Pipe’s investors are Gaz-System and its Danish peer Energinet.
Saipem is expected to begin work in the sec- ond half of 2020 by preparing landfall work sites in Poland and Denmark and launching the pipe- line’s route surveys.
“Vessels preparing the seabed for pipeline installation will mobilise in the Baltic in the first half of next year. Pipelay as such will start in the summer of 2021. The pipeline handover for operationisplannedinOctober2022,”Gaz-Sys- tem said in a statement.
The value of the contract is PLN 280mn ($66.5mn). ™
German gas grids invite comments on $9.2bn development plan
GERMANY
Germany’s import needs are due to keep rising.
GERMANY’S gas grid operators have invited consultation on a plan to invest €8.5bn ($9.2bn) over the next ten years to prepare the country for increased imports.
Germany is the biggest gas market in Europe, with demand topping 100bn cubic metres in 2019 and expected to keep rising. But domestic gas production is falling, totalling just 6.1 bcm last year, meaning that more imports will be needed to fill the gap.
The Gas Network Development Plan (Gas NDP) envisages the construction of almost 1,750 km of extra pipeline and 405 MW more compressor capacity by 2030. FNB, a group of German network operators, has given market participants until May 29 to comment on the plan. They will hold a web-based workshop to discuss its details on May 13.
Included in the programme is the Eugal pipe- line, which is due to handle Russian gas arriving in northern Germany from the yet-to-be-completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It will carry this gas to the Czech Republic. The plan also covers provisions
for one or two planned LNG import terminals. FNB has also set out provisions for the sup- ply of extra gas to the landlocked state of Baden Wuerttemberg, in Germany’s south-west, where nuclear and older coal plants are due to be retired. Germany mostly relies on gas imports from Russia, received via Nord Stream 1, Poland and the Czech Republic. But it also taps supplies from
North Sea fields.
The neighbouring Netherlands, once a major
gas supplier, is preparing to shut down the giant earthquake-causing Groningen field by early 2022. This means that Northwest Europe’s gas transport and consumer infrastructure will need adapting for higher-calorific gas.
FNB’s members are Bayernets, Fluxys Deutschland, Fluxys TENP, Gascade Gastrans- port, Gastransport Nord, Gasunie Deutschland Transport Services, GRTgaz Deutschland, Lub- min-Brandov Gastransport, NEL Gastransport, Nowega, Ontras Gastransport, Opal Gastrans- port, Open Grid Europe, Terranets BW and Thyssengas. ™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 18 07•May•2020