Dunkirk Expects 1st LNG Next Month
The first LNG cargo into the new over-€1bn Dunkirk terminal is now scheduled to arrive between July 4 and 8, developer Dunkerque GNL has said.
In April the company said it expected its first commissioning cargo by the end of June but, speaking to NGE on June 3, it said strikes across France that have affected the country's oil refineries and transport sectors were not a factor in the delayed start-up, and that the port of Dunkirk is operating normally.
Integrity tests using liquid nitrogen as well as propane have been undertaken, it said, but no LNG volumes have yet been brought in for cool-down operations.
The roof of one of the terminal's LNG storage tanks (Photo credit: Dunkerque GNL)
Dunkerque GNL, the EDF-led developer and operator of the 13bn m3/yr terminal, declined to say which company would deliver the first commissioning cargo, or from which country it would come.
Last month France’s energy and environment minister Segolene Royal said she wanted to find a “legal way” to ban US LNG derived from shale gas. However industry sources have noted that such a ban would prompt firms with contracts to lift cargoes from Cheniere at Sabine Pass – such as EDF, Engie and Total – to ship them to Belgium's Zeebrugge LNG import terminal instead.
On May 27 the Flanders Artery was inaugurated, a reversible pipeline that further increases the capacity for gas to be exported from Belgium to France. Carrying commingled molecules from conventional gas production from northwest Europe as well as LNG from everywhere, the pipeline will make a ban impossible.
Mark Smedley