LNG producer Qatargas, a unit of QatarEnergy, said it had delivered a liquefied natural gas cargo aboard a Q-Flex vessel to China’s Beihai LNG terminal, the first ever call by a Qatargas-chartered vessel at this facility operated by PipeChina.
The 216,200-cbm Q-Flex LNG carrier, Al Sahla, is the largest LNG carrier to call at the terminal since the start of its operations in 2016, according to a statement by Qatargas issued on Tuesday.
Al Sahla delivered about 205,000 cbm of LNG from Ras Laffan, Qatar, to the Beihai LNG terminal, located in the Tieshan Port Industrial Zone in Beihai Zhuang Autonomous region, in the Guangxi province, on October 5.
Earlier this year, this vessel also delivered the first shipment to China’s state-controlled energy giant Sinopec under its long-term deal with QatarEnergy.
Now it became the largest LNG carrier to call the Beihai terminal which has capacity to also accommodate the even larger Q-Max LNG vessels carrying up to 266,000 cbm.
Qatargas said that Sinopec took this LNG cargo as well.
The Beihai terminal, which has nominal capacity of three million tonnes of LNG per year, comprises of four storage tanks each, with an overall capacity of 640,000 cbm.
Qatargas, in collaboration with Sinopec and PipeChina Beihai LNG Terminal, has cleared vessels up to size of Q-Max.
This facilitates customer to receive larger volumes along with additional flexibility to wider range of LNG receiving terminals, it said.
Since the first LNG delivery in September 2009 to date, Qatar has supplied China with more than 85 million tonnes of LNG, according to Qatargas.
Qatargas recently delivered the first LNG cargo to CNOOC’s Jiangsu-Binhai LNG terminal in China as well.