Centrica and Bridgepoint’s ECP wrap up Grain LNG acquisition

Centrica announced the closing of the acquisition with an enterprise value of 1.5 billion pounds ($1.99 billion) in a statement on Friday.

After taking into account 1.1 billion pounds of new non-recourse project finance debt, Centrica’s 50 percent share of the equity investment is approximately 200 million pounds, the firm said.

In October, the European Commission approved the joint purchase by Centrica and Bridgepoint of the Grain LNG terminal.

“The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given the limited impact on the European Economic Area,” it said.

Launched in 2005, the Grain terminal has an annual regasification capacity of 21.7 bcm and tank storage capacity of 1,000,000 cbm.

Grain LNG is currently undergoing an expansion of 5.3 bcm additional regasification capacity and an additional 190,000 cbm storage tank.

According to National Grid’s website, the total investment in the LNG facility reached more than $1.1 billion to date.

Grain LNG capacity

Grain LNG is 100 percent contracted until 2029, more than 70 percent contracted until 2038, and more than 50 percent contracted until 2045.

In February last year, National Grid revealed two Grain LNG capacity agreements with Algeria’s LNG producer Sonatrach and US LNG exporter Venture Global LNG.

Under the binding terminal use agreement with Venture Global, the firm will have the ability to access 3 mtpa of LNG storage and regasification capacity at the Grain LNG terminal for 16 years beginning in 2029.

The deal will enable the regasification and sale of LNG from all of Venture Global’s LNG terminals in Louisiana, including CP2 LNG.

Before this agreement, Grain LNG signed a ten-year deal with Sonatrach that will extend the latter’s storage and redelivery capacity at the LNG import terminal from January 2029.

This is the first agreement for 125GWh/d of import capacity, equivalent to 3 mtpa of LNG, from Grain LNG’s competitive auction process which was launched in September 2023 for about 9 mtpa of existing capacity.

National Grid’s first customers, BP/Sonatrach, were awarded a 20-year contract for 3.3 mtpa of LNG throughput capacity per year.

With the increase in capacity to 14.8 mtpa, additional contracts were awarded, again on a long-term basis, to Centrica, GDF Suez (now TotalEnergies) and Sonatrach, from December 2008 and to E.ON, Iberdrola and Centrica from December 2010.

Iberdrola sold its capacity to Pavilion Energy effective from January 2020.

Back in 2020, QatarEnergy also booked capacity from 2025 as part of the expansion of the Grain terminal.

QatarEnergy recently started using this booked capacity.