State-owned China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network (PipeChina) has received the first liquefied natural gas cargo at its Zhangzhou LNG import terminal in Fujian.
The LNG carrier Macoma delivered the commissioning cargo from Australia to the Zhangzhou LNG import facility on May 21, according to a statement by PipeChina’s LNG terminal management unit. It left the facility on May 26.
Sepaeak’s 2017-built 173,000-cbm LNG carrier brought the LNG cargo from Shell’s QCLNG plant in Australia, its AIS data provided by VesselsValue shows.
This will be the first new LNG import terminal commissioned in China this year and the first new facility for PipeChina since its launch in 2019, PipeChina LNG Terminal Management said.
The Zhangzhou LNG terminal has a capacity of 3 million mt of LNG, equivalent to 4.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and will supply gas to Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and other provinces, meeting the needs of 13 million households, it said.
PipeChina said the first phase of the facility includes three LNG storage tanks each with a capacity of 160,000 cbm, one jetty able to receive LNG carriers from 80,000 cbm to 270,000 cbm capacity, and a truck loading facility with 10 loading bays.
China launched PipeChina in December 2019 to acquire pipelines and LNG import terminals from the country’s state-owned energy giants.
PipeChina LNG Terminal Management currently operates seven LNG receiving terminals, not including the Zhangzhou LNG facility.
Besides this terminal, the firm is also building two new LNG terminals.
In December last year, PipeChina received the 400th LNG cargo at its Tianjin LNG import terminal.
A unit of PipeChina recently also recently signed a license agreement with French LNG containment giant GTT enabling it to use GTT membrane containment technology for onshore LNG storage.