Italian energy firm Eni has started providing additional volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Snam’s Panigaglia regasification terminal in Liguria ahead of the 2022-2023 winter.
As part of its plan to strengthen and diversify gas supplies to Italy, Eni delivered the first LNG cargo to the terminal on Sunday with supplies coming from Angola, according to a statement.
Eni said the LNG supplies were reloaded on smaller ships at Spanish terminals for them to be compatible with the Panigaglia terminal.
Also, the firm plans to supply further LNG deliveries from Egypt and Algeria in October.
Eni said the overall contribution of additional LNG volumes to Italy, thanks to the availability of regasification terminals currently under development, would exceed 2 billion cubic meters between 2022 and 2023.
It would progressively reach 7 billion cubic meters between 2023 and 2024, and would exceed 9 billion cubic meters between 2024-2025, in addition to further pipeline supplies, Eni said.
According to Snam, the Panigaglia LNG terminal, Italy’s oldest regasification plant, has two 50,000 cbm LNG storage tanks and a regasification capacity of 3.5 bcm per year.
Besides this facility, Italy has the FSRU Toscana and the Adriatic LNG import terminal as well as the small-scale facilities such as the terminal in the port of Ravenna and the Higas terminal.
This year, Snam also bought one FSRU from BW and one from Golar and also signed a deal to convert LNG carrier Golar Arctic into an FSRU.
Italy plans to launch the FSRU-based terminal in Piombino in the first half of next year and Snam would probably employ the 2015-built FSRU Golar Tundra to serve this facility.