Page 10 - GLNG Week 49

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Elengy fully books French LNG terminal
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
FRENCH LNG terminal operator Elengy has managed to fully book its Montoir-de-Bretagne regasification plant between 2023 and 2035, with only a small amount of spare capacity still avail- able in 2021 and 2022.
Elengy in July offered around 3.5bn cubic metres of unsubscribed capacity between Octo- ber 2021 and December 2035, and even pushed back the deadline for bids by a month until November 5, reporting “a tremendous level of interest from the market.”
Commenting on the result, Elengy said on December 4 that it reflected “the dynamism of the LNG market, as well as the appetite for regasification capacity in France, gateway to the North-West Europe gas markets.”
Montoir-de-Bretagne is situated on the Atlan- tic coast, while Elengy’s other two terminals – Fos Tonkin and Fos Cavaou – are on the shore of the Mediterranean. The Montoir-de-Bretagne facility entered operations in 1980 and includes 360,000 cubic metres of storage capacity and two berths that can receive LNG carriers with tanks up to 267,000 cubic metres in size.
Elengy said it would study options for offer- ing further capacity at the Fos Cavaou terminal, near Marseille, after 2030, as well as at Montoir- de-Bretagne beyond 2035, in order to meet client expectations better.
The two sites provide direct and attractive access to European markets and have a strategic location, making them competitive LNG hubs for reloading, transhipment, bunkering and truck loading, the operator said.
LNG supplies transported via the French gas grid have doubled over the past year, reaching 211 TWh at the end of October. The growth is the result of higher overall demand for LNG in Europe and the completion of a pipeline linking northern and southern France. Another factor has been last year’s creation of a single market zone, known as Trading Region France, which has facilitated gas transit across the country.
The surge in LNG transit has helped France boost its gas storage to record levels ahead of winter, with network operators reporting stored volumes of 129 TWh in late November.™
ExxonMobil launches surveys for Far Eastern LNG project
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
EXXONMOBIL plans to undertake a series of marine engineering surveys in preparation for the Far Eastern LNG project.
ExxonMobil is developing Far Eastern LNG with its Sakhalin-1 partners Russia’s Rosneft, Japan’s Sodeco and India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL). The project has been in the works for years but only started gaining traction in 2018. In that year Rosneft reported that it had entered the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage – a pre-requisite for a final investment decision (FID) to be reached. In September, Rosneft head Igor Sechin said the Sakhalin-1 shareholders had taken a decision to develop it, without clarifying whether this constituted a formal FID.
ExxonMobil intends to carry out the surveys between this month and March 2020. They will take place in Chikhachev Bay and the adjacent Tartar Strait.
The terminal itself will be built at De-Kastri, on the coast of mainland Russia’s Khabarovsk region. It will produce up to 6.2mn tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG, from gas at the Arkutun-Dagi,
Chayvo and Odoptu oilfields off the east coast of Sakhalin Island. In a recent presentation, Rus- sia’s energy ministry said the project would cost $4.2bn to develop and would be ready to operate in 2027.
Much of the gas in the Sakhalin-1 fields is currently unutilised, but some of it is supplied to consumers in the Khabarovsk region. For some time there were concerns whether Sakhalin-1 had a sufficiently large gas resource to justify development of an LNG terminal. Doubts also linger over Rosneft’s capability and the risk that US sanctions could be extended to include LNG projects.
Rosneft has long coveted the LNG exporting status of its domestic rivals Novatek and Gaz- prom. But the company is yet to bring a project into development successfully. Earlier it had a plan to construct a 2.6mn tpy terminal on the shore of the Pechora Sea, but the project was qui- etly shelved last year after authorities denied it an export licence. It had become clear that Rosneft did not have access to enough gas in the area to underpin the venture.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 49 12•December•2019