Nov 18, 2024

German LNG terminal at Mukran available to support Austrian supply

Germany's newest LNG import terminal at Mukran has the capacity to offer "immediate" support to Austria's gas supply following the cutoff in Russian supplies to Austria's OMV, operator Deutsche ReGas said Nov. 16.
Russia's Gazprom Export halted gas supplies to OMV on Nov. 16 after the Austrian company said it would recover arbitration compensation by offsetting it against its bills for Russian gas deliveries. The Mukran LNG terminal on the island of Rugen -- which is made up of two FSRUs -- began regular operations at the start of September and has a total feed-in capacity of 13.5 Bcm/year.
"The terminal capacities are therefore available for immediate support of the Austrian energy supply," Deutsche ReGas supervisory board chairman Stephan Knabe said.
Knabe said Germany's LNG capacity had been developed also with neighboring countries in mind.
The suspension of supplies to OMV was a scenario that the German government had also prepared for with the LNG Acceleration Act, in line with the European idea of solidarity, he said.
The Mukran terminal, he said, would provide "significant" supply capacity for Austrian gas consumers.
"The terminal offers feed-in capacities of up to 13.5 Bcm/year and, with a throughput capacity of 16 GWh/h, is the largest feed-in point of all German LNG terminals," he said.
From Mukran, gas can be transported "easily and in significant quantities" through the German and Czech gas pipeline networks to Austria, Knabe said.
The terminal could, in theory, cover all of Austria's annual consumption of around 7 Bcm.
LNG build-out Mukran is made up of two FSRUs -- the Neptune and the Energos Power -- with the Neptune having previously operated at the port of Lubmin.
With operations having formally started in September at Mukran -- the only privately-operated LNG import terminal in the country -- Germany now has four FSRUs that can import LNG and regasify it to send into the national grid.
The others -- backed by the state -- are deployed at Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbuttel.
Germany has imported a total of 9.5 million mt (13.1 Bcm) of LNG since December 2022 when the first FSRU at Wilhelmshaven began operations, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data.
It comes as spot LNG prices remain high. Platts, part of Commodity Insights, assessed the Northwest Europe LNG marker on Nov. 15 at $13.97/MMBtu.
Germany rushed to deploy LNG import infrastructure after it was cut off from Russian gas supplies in the summer of 2022.
Berlin passed the LNG Acceleration Act to speed up the approval process for new import terminals by temporarily exempting projects from certain requirements, particularly around environmental impact assessments.
The act was part of legislation designed to protect Germany's energy security along with a move to the second "alert" level of its emergency gas plan and strict gas storage filling obligations.
Germany became the first EU country to declare the "alert" stage of its gas crisis plan in June 2022 after Russian gas exports via the Nord Stream pipeline were sharply reduced.
The country had already moved to the first "early warning" level in March along with other EU countries, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine the previous month.

Source: spglobal.com