10/01/2023
The German company Deutsche ReGas is launching a natural gas terminal in Lubmin at the end of next week. It will be the second in Germany and the first to be fully privately owned, according to the specialist publication LNG Prime.
The company is now awaiting the final permit from the local government.
The commissioning ceremony of the terminal will take place on 14 January at 14:00 local time. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Economics Minister Robert Habek are expected to attend.
The Lubmin terminal will be based on the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) Neptune and the tanker Seapeak Hispania, moored off the neighboring island of Rügen. Because of draft limitations in Lubmin, the gas will first be transshipped to the Seapeak Hispania and then transported by small tankers to the terminal, which will regasify it and feed it into the gas transportation network.
The regasification capacity will be 5.2 billion cubic meters a year. A year later, a second FSRU will be installed at the terminal, which should increase its capacity to 11.5 billion cubic meters, and by mid-2024 it will reach 13.5 billion cubic meters.
The first German LNG terminal was launched in mid-December by the energy company Uniper, it is located in Wilhelmshaven.
By the end of January, Germany is going to launch another LNG import terminal - in the town of Brunsbüttel. It will be operated by RWE.
Back at the beginning of 2022, Germany was the only large EU country without a single terminal for its acceptance and regasification. It had access to cheap Russian gas, so the country did not consider it necessary to invest in expensive infrastructure for LNG.
The situation changed after Russia began blackmailing Germany with gas and eventually stopped supplies via Nord Stream. Now Germany is completely independent of energy resources from Russia.
