Greece’s Gastrade restarts Alexandroupolis FSRU ops

Gastrade announced the resumption of unloading and regasification services at the Alexandroupolis LNG terminal on Monday.

“Such services will become available at a maximum regasification capacity of 45.4 GWh/day, including redundancy with respect to its booster pumps,” the company said.

According to Gastrade, the above capacity will remain available until September 30, 2025, under “specific operational and commercial conditions.”

“The present 25 percent limitation of the terminal’s nominal capacity will be lifted at the start of the new gas year, on October 1, 2025, whereas certain operational restrictions may remain for a limited period thereafter,”

In May, Gastrade said it plans to resume Alexandroupolis FSRU operations on August 15

Gastrade revealed that the suspension of regasification services, which emerged in late January, was due to “a technical issue leading to the damage of the booster pumps onboard the FSRU.”

LNG shipments

As previously reported by LNG Prime, UK-based energy giant BP supplied an LNG cargo to Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz via the Alexandroupolis FSRU in January.

The 2021-built 174,000-cbm, BW Lesmes, delivered the shipment from the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas to the 153,500-cbm FSRU, Alexandroupolis, on January 19.

In November last year, Bulgargaz picked UK-based BP Gas Marketing, a unit of BP, and US-based Venture Global Commodities to supply two spot LNG cargoes via the Alexandrouplis FSRU-based terminal in January and February this year.

This new delivery by BP marked the fourth commercial LNG delivery to the FSRU-based facility in Alexandrouplis.

Gastrade’s FSRU received its first commercial LNG shipment from Equinor’s Hammerfest LNG terminal in Norway on October 3, 2024.

This shipment was supplied to Bulgargaz by French energy giant TotalEnergies.

In addition, TotalEnergies also supplied Bulgargaz with one LNG shipment in November and the other in December.

The November LNG cargo was sourced from Sempra’s Cameron LNG terminal in Louisiana, while the December cargo arrived from Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana.

Gastrade’s shareholders include founder Copelouzou, DESFA, DEPA, Bulgartransgaz, and GasLog.

This is Greece’s first FSRU and the second LNG import terminal, adding to DESFA’s Revithoussa LNG terminal.

The Alexandroupolis LNG terminal has a capacity of up to 5.5 bcm per year, or some 66.3 TWh per year.