Finland’s first FSRU-based facility in the port of Inkoo has received a new cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG), according to Gasgrid.
The 155,000-cbm LNG carrier Solaris delivered a full LNG cargo to Excelerate Energy’s 150,900-cbm FSRU Exemplar, which serves Gasgrid’s import facility in Inkoo under a charter deal, Gasgrid said in a statement on April 21.
Gasgrid said the loading went as planned and the gas supplies were fed into the gas network for use by industry, energy production, as well as households.
The state-owned natural gas transmission system operator did not provide any additional details regarding the shipment.
According to its AIS data provided by VesselsValue, the 2014-built Solaris, owned by GasLog Partners, delivered the shipment to Inkoo from Cheniere’s Corpus Christi LNG terminal in the US.
This delivery follows the first commercial LNG shipment for the new FSRU-based facility in Finland.
Eesti Gas, a unit of Estonian investment firm Infortar, recently received the first LNG cargo from the US via Finland’s FSRU-based LNG terminal.
Also, the Tallinn-based firm, which is branded internationally as Elenger, purchased the cargo from energy trader Vitol.
It will bring in total seven shipments via the Inkoo FSRU in spring and summer this year.
1-2 vessels per month
Gasgrid said in the statement it expects 1-2 vessels per month to arrive at the FSRU-based facility in Inkoo.
So far, the facility, operated by its unit Floating LNG Terminal Finland, has already delivered the equivalent of an entire LNG ship (1,000 GWh) of gas to the transmission network, it said.
Satu Mattila, CEO of FLTF, said in the statement that almost the entire capacity of the current gas year has been booked.
“All the spring and summer slots in the terminal have been reserved, and one slot in August and one in September can still be booked,” she said.
Gasgrid recently received approval to start offering reloading services at the FSRU-based facility in the port of Inkoo to boost the terminal’s utilization rate.
FLTF is offering in total 35 terminal slots of 1,000 GWh each for the period from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024.
Excelerate Energy’s FSRU Exemplar has a regasification capacity of more than 5 billion cubic meters per year and started supplying regasified LNG to the grid on December 29 as part of the commissioning phase.
After that, Gasgrid said in January that that the FSRU-based facility, which connects to a 2.2 km long gas transmission pipeline, was ready to start commercial operations.
Last month, the state-owned firm reduced the number of planned LNG import slots for the April-September period due to “limitation of transmission capacity in Balticconnector and expected market demand.”