Deutsche ReGas launches commercial ops at Mukran FSRU terminal

Deutsche ReGas said in a statement the “Deutsche Ostsee” energy terminal has started “regular operations” on Monday.

This follows the unloading of a US LNG cargo at the Mukran facility which features two floating storage and regasification units, Energos Power and Neptune.

The 2021-built 174,000-cbm LNG carrier, Hellas Diana, owned by Latsco and chartered by Trafigura, delivered the LNG cargo from the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas.

According to Deutsche ReGas, Hellas Diana unloaded its cargo at the Mukran terminal from Wednesday to Friday last week.

“This was a world first for a concurrent LNG delivery into the two interconnected FSRUs (so-called triple banking),” the LNG firm led by Ingo Wagner and Stephan Knabe claims.

The privately financed LNG terminal has a storage capacity of over 300,000 cubic meters of LNG and is the largest feed-in point of all German LNG terminals with a firm capacity of 16 GWh/h, Deutsche ReGas said.

Around 15 percent of Germany’s total natural gas demand can be fed from the terminal into the OAL, NEL, and EUGAL gas pipeline system.

The pipelines enable gas transport from the German Baltic coast onwards within Germany, Austria, and also to the neighboring Eastern European countries, it said.

FSRUs

In July, Deutsche ReGas welcomed the second FSRU at its LNG import terminal in Mukran.

The 2009-built 145,000-cbm, FSRU Neptune, arrived on July 3 at the terminal.

The unit, which is 50 percent owned by Hoegh LNG and sub-chartered by Deutsche ReGas from TotalEnergies, left in May Germany’s industrial port of Lubmin, where it served the Lubmin terminal.

Deutsche ReGas officially launched its Lubmin FSRU-based LNG import terminal, first private LNG terminal in Germany, in January last year.

After leaving Lumbin, Neptune was located for about in a yard in Denmark to complete preparational work prior to its deployment at the Mukran LNG terminal on the island of Rügen.

Prior to the arrival of Neptune, the Mukran terminal featured the 2021-built 174,000-cbm, Energos Power, owned by US-based Energos Infrastructure.

In June last year, Deutsche ReGas signed a deal with the German government to sub-charter the FSRU delivered in 2021 by Hudong-Zhonghua. Deutsche ReGas took over the charter of Energos Power in October last year.

Deutsche ReGas received the first LNG tanker at the Mukran facility in March this year as part of the commissioning phase.

Neptune and Energos Power are located side-by-side at the berth 12 in the Mukran port.

Capacity

In June, Deutsche ReGas invited market participants to express an interest in capacity at the Mukran FSRU-based facility from 2024 to 2027.

Howevher, a Deutsche ReGas spokesman recently told LNG Prime that the auctions could not take place due to technical difficulties on the PRISMA marketing platform.

He said Deutsche ReGas plans to reschedule the auction in the second half of 2024.

“Irrespective of these technical restrictions, some short-term capacities were successfully marketed,” the spokesman said.

Worth mentioning here, France’s TotalEnergies and Switzerland-based MET previously booked capacity at the Lumbin FSRU terminal.

MET booked 1 bcm per year and TotalEnergies took 2.6 bcm per year of the regasification capacity for a total of 3.6 bcm.