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Gaz-System and Germany-based contractor TGE Gas Engineering announced the arrival of the first LNG cargo at the new jetty via separate social media posts.
The 2022-built 174,000-cbm, Lech Kaczynski, which is owned by Knutsen and chartered by Orlen, delivered the shipment on November 29.
According to its AIS data provided by VesselsValue, the LNG carrier brought the cargo from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass facility in Lousiana.
Gaz-System said that about 160,000 cbm of LNG have been transferred via the newly built jetty to the third storage tank.
The LNG supplies will be used to commission the third tank.
According to Gaz-System, this is the 323rd LNG delivery to the Sinoujscie terminal since the launch of operations in 2016 and the 55th delivery this year.
The LNG facility also received one cargo this week.
Expansion
In June 2022, Gaz-System announced that its contractors had raised the roof on the third LNG storage tank at the Swinoujscie facility.
The new 180,000-cbm tank is part of the expansion project that will considerably boost the capacity of the only LNG terminal in Poland.
TGE Gas Engineering, part of China’s CIMC, and a Polish unit of Austrian PORR Group won the contract to build the facilities.
Gaz-System previously said that the expansion project will be built in two phases.
The first phase was completed at the beginning of 2022, and it included boosting the terminal’s regasification capacity to 6.2 bcm per year.
The second phase includes the third tank and the additional jetty.
Gaz-System says the new jetty is capable of unloading, loading, and bunkering operations.
Once this phase is complete, the expanded terminal will have a total regasification capacity of about 8.3 bcm per year.
Polish LNG imports
Poland’s LNG imports via the Swinoujscie terminal rose almost 6 percent in 2023 compared to the year before, boosted by shipments from the US.
The Swinoujscie LNG terminal received 62 cargoes or about 4.66 million tonnes of LNG in 2023.
The growth of LNG imports was possible due to the expansion of Gaz System’s facility in Swinoujscie, where Orlen booked a regasification capacity of 6.2 bcm per year since 2022.
Orlen booked all of these volumes as part of the latest expansion phase.
In addition, Orlen booked 6.1 bcm per year of regasification capacity at Gaz-System’s planned FSRU-based LNG import facility in Gdansk.
In April, Japan’s shipping giant MOL signed a long-term FSRU charter deal with Gaz-System for the planned LNG import terminal in Gdansk.
This will be the second LNG import terminal in Poland and the first FSRU-based facility.
Qatar and the US are the leading suppliers of LNG to Poland as part of long-term contracts, while the US has been the dominant supplier in the last couple of years.
Other suppliers include Norway, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Equatorial Guinea, and Egypt.
