Under EU State aid rules, the European Commission has approved Polish plans to support the increase of the regasification capacity (from 5 to 7.5 billion cubic metres per year), as well the development of additional functionalities, of the LNG terminal in Świnoujście, Poland.
In light of the upcoming federal election in Australia, Gas Energy Australia, the country’s downstream gaseous fuels peak industry body, gave a submission to the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities regarding LNG marine bunkering in Australia. The submission aims to inform DoIRC on alternative fuels for Australia’s contribution to the next IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee.
Wärtsilä has been given Notice to Proceed for a Liquid biogas (bioLNG) plant to be built in Asker, Norway. The contract for the plant was given in April 2018 by VEAS, a Norwegian wastewater treatment and biogas producing company, and the Notice to Proceed was signed in December 2018. The plant is expected to start operation during 2020.
The newly constructed LNG terminal inside Kamarajar Port, Ennore in Chennai, India, welcomed its first tanker. Namely, the Marshall Islands-flagged LNG carrier ‘LNG/C Golar Snow’ was carrying the first consignment of 78,037m³ of LNG from Ras Laffan in Qatar for the commissioning of the terminal. The LNG market is expected to drive an increase in the number of tanker calls, in India.
The US Department of Energy gave the green light on the export of the domestic LNG production from Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal being built in Louisiana. Thus, Venture will export more than 1.7 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas as LNG to countries that do not have a free trade agreement with the U.S.
Russian natural gas producer Novatek will launch a medium-scale LNG plant in Vysotsk, in Leningrad Region, with a capacity of 600.000 tonnes by April 2019, as NOVATEK CEO Leonid Mikhelson informed Vladimir Putin. Through Vladimir Putin’s briefing, the CEO reported that in a month the company has scheduled to launch a medium-scale LNG plant mostly for bunkering purposes.
SEA/LNG announced that is firmly supports that LNG is a viable pathway to be in line with IMO’s 2020 GHG targets. The shipping sector has two important paths two follow. Firstly, the industry aims to a rapid improvement of air quality. Secondly, the decrease of GHG emissions is vital.
Increased demand for cleaner-burning fuel in Asia led to rapid growth in LNG use in 2018, with global demand growing by 27 million tonnes to 319 million tonnes, according to Shell’s 2019 LNG Outlook. Shell expects demand to reach about 384 million tonnes in 2020. Global LNG supply is expected to rise by 35 million tonnes in 2019, with Europe and Asia absorbing all this additional supply.
US based energy major Chevron has allegedly restarted production from its third liquefaction train at the Gorgon LNG plant on Barrow Island in Western Australia. The unit was brought back online the previous weekend, after an outage that lasted since mid-January when a mechanical issue caused a halt, Reuters reports.
The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that it reached an agreement that may provide a path forward for consideration of LNG export terminals that are pending before the Commission. In the context of the Commission’s approval of Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG export project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, the Commission applied a new approach for consideration of direct GHG emissions from LNG facilities.
