Finnish natural gas transmission operator has not finalised the cargo’s delivery point, which could be the Finnish port of Inkoo or Estonia’s Paldiski port
Gasgrid Finland signed a 10-year charter deal in May 2022 with Excelerate Energy for use of floating storage and regasification vessel (FSRU) Exemplarto support LNG imports as Europe seeks to shift away from Russian natural gas.
The 10-year charter agreement between Excelerate and Gasgrid Finland will provide LNG to Finland, Estonia, and the Baltic Sea region.
The FSRU sailed from Argentina to Spain in late September and is expected to go into drydock for maintenance and winterisation before moving to the Baltic Sea.
In mid-September, Gasgrid said the 151,000-m3 FSRU would be up and running by January 2023.
The vessel can supply more than 5Bn m3 per year of regasification capacity. Its first cargo is expected to be approximately 1 TWh, according to Gasgrid.
With Gasgrid and Fortum currently preparing an LNG import facility at the Finnish port of Inkoo and an Estonian consortium building an LNG import terminal in Paldiski, Estonia, Gasgrid has not yet finalised where the initial cargo will arrive.
Gasgrid said the regasification schedule is subject to the terminal start-up schedule and the commissioning process timeline and could not yet guarantee “firm daily regasification”.
The Gasgrid subsidiary managing the FSRU, Floating LNG Terminal Finland Oy, “is currently in process of arranging an FSRU to Inkoo, Finland or Paldiski, Estonia. As part of the process, the FSRU needs to be cooled and a commissioning cargo for technical testing needs to be supplied. The current estimate is the commissioning cargo will be delivered approximately mid-December,” according to Gasgrid.
“During the commissioning process, the cargo will be regasified into the transmission system (either Finnish or Estonian). The resulting gas will be sold to national security of supply organisations (SoS) and market participants. The SoS’s will have a priority,” Gasgrid said.
Gasgrid said that, once operational, gas will be sold to market participants “on a market-related price”. The exact price, including all service fees and a terminal regasification fee, will be published at the time of the procurement of the commissioning cargo, according to the company, which asked for those interested in offtake to indicate their volume requirements by 17 October 2022.
