Snohvit News

The first vessel carrying LNG for Germany's Baltic Sea terminal of Mukran arrived on Saturday for a test operation as the country steps up its quest to replace Russian pipeline gas.Private company Deutsche ReGas said that Energos Power, a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), had moored at the terminal on Ruegen Island, having received approval from local authorities.Germany has intensified its quest to increase LNG capacity for regasification on its shores, as European countries seek to reduce their heavy reliance on Russian gas following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.The tests will

State-run Polish gas company PGNiG will receive its first spot delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Norway’s Statoil on June 25, it said on Tuesday, taking advantage of cheap and abundant global supply. Reuters reports that on 25 June Swinoujscie will also take delivery of a 140,000-tonne spot cargo from Statoil of Norway, which has agreed to supply “at least one” such spot cargo to the terminal. Gas will be transported from the Norwegian port of Snohvit on the Arctic Princess. “The first cargo of LNG under the Qatar contract is expected at the Swinoujscie terminal is due on June 17 and a spot cargo from Statoil is scheduled for June 25," says a company statement.

One major new development on the Northern Sea Route is the interest in using it to move liquefied natural gas to energy-hungry Asian markets, writes Stan Jones of the Office of the Federal Coordinator, Alaska Natural Gas in a recent article. Late last year, the LNG carrier Ob River hauled the first LNG cargo over the route, from Norway to Kyushu Electric Power in Tobata, in southern Japan. The icebreaker-escorted trip, from the Snohvit LNG terminal in Hammerfest, took 27 days, and that was in November and December, late in the season.

India’s third liquefied natural gas import terminal will receive its first shipment this month from Norway, two people with knowledge of the transaction said. The so-called commissioning cargo, which will be used to prepare the site for commercial operations, will be delivered by Excelerate Energy LLC to GAIL India Ltd.’s Dabhol terminal, on the country’s west coast, on about March 27, one of the people said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential. The LNG carrier, called Excelerate, loaded last week at Statoil ASA’s Snohvit LNG plant in the Barents Sea off Norway and is bound for Dabhol, both people said. The ship is currently in the Mediterranean Sea heading east. India is increasing LNG imports after Mumbai-based Reliance Industries Ltd.

StatoilHydro has begun a two-year drilling program in Arctic waters to determine the potential of Norway's share of one of the world's few remaining unexplored oil prospects, the Financial Times reported.It also hopes to cooperate with Russian companies such to find oil and gas further into the Arctic. StatoilHydro last month started deliveries of liquefied natural gas from an offshore field inside the Arctic circle with its Snohvit project. Over the next 18 months or so, StatoilHydro test the area around the development to see if it can find enough to justify building a second LNG line. Lund suggested in an interview with the newspaper that he wants Norway to work with Russia on future development of Arctic resources.

A non-binding letter of intent has been signed by Statoil with US-based Dominion energy company. This gives Statoil the exclusive right to negotiate a deal which will secure access for the group to extra capacity at the Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Maryland. If the agreement is concluded, Statoil will take the entire capacity increase for a 20-year period. The group will thus more than quadruple the amount of capacity available to it at the terminal. Dominion is planning to expand the capacity at the terminal, where LNG is stored and regasified before being piped to customers. The expansion includes two new storage tanks with a total capacity of approximately 195 million cubic metres.

Agreements concluded with America's Dominion energy company have secured Statoil a fourfold increase in its access to liquefied natural gas capacity in the US market. This will be achieved by expanding the Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland and associated pipeline transportation capacity on the American east coast. "These agreements give us unique market access to the north-eastern USA, where gas demand is high and the market robust and liquid," says Peter Mellbye, executive vice president for Natural Gas in Statoil. The deals give Statoil access to terminal, storage and pipeline transportation totalling about 10 billion cubic metres of gas per year (1.05 billion cubic feet per day).

There are 2,511 identified pending, probable and possible subsea production wells forecast (base case) worldwide over the next six years. Some 18 percent of these subsea completions will be installed in North America, 30 percent in Africa/Mediterranean, eight percent in Asia-Pacific, 26 percent in the North Sea and 18 percent in Brazil. These subsea projects are in various development stages, including: 23 percent at the pending/construction stage, 11 percent bidding, 9 percent in detailed engineering, 16 percent at the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage, 16 percent of the wells probable and 26 percent possible indicating possible development in the future.

El Paso Global LNG, a subsidiary of El Paso Corporation, announced today that the definitive liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchase and sale agreement signed in October 2001 with a consortium of natural gas production companies led by Statoil ASA received final Norwegian and United States government approvals on May 31, 2002. The consortium will develop the Snohvit Project in northern Norway and provide El Paso with an annual delivery of approximately 1.8 million tons of LNG during the 17-year primary term of the agreement. This agreement will account for more than 40 percent of the total capacity to be produced at the Snohvit Project's LNG liquefaction facility, which will be located on Melkoya Island, just north of Hammerfest, Norway.

LNG carrier “Arctic Princess” is seen leaving the Statoil LNG plant at Melkoya Island, Hammerfest, Norway, on September 20 with the first-ever cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Snohvit fields northwest of Hammerfest, Norway. GAC-Ole R Olsen’s Hammerfest team took care of the vessel from its arrival on Sept 10, the loading of its historic cargo, and departure from the terminal. “ARCTIC PRINCESS” is 288 meters long and has a fully-laden capacity of 147 000 cubic meters of LNG. The LNG is carried at a temperature of minus 163 degrees centigrade in four spherical tanks, each with a diameter of 42 meters. A full cargo load of LNG is sufficient to cover the yearly energy consumption of all households in a city with a population of 45 000 people. (Photo Credit: Courtesy of GAC)

BP reportedly agreed to pay more than $500,000 a day to secure the continued use of a drillship in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a report on www. Business.timesonline.co.uk. From December next year, BP will pay a day rate of $520,000 (£297,000) to charter the Discoverer Enterprise, almost three times more than it pays at present for the use of the ship. The surge in price reflects a desperation among oil explorers to retain control of scarce resources, essential if the companies are to meet their own oil production targets. A shortage of drilling rigs is delaying exploration programs in the North Sea while a surge in drilling activity in the Middle East is driving up the costs offshore of Texas and Louisiana as the newly rich state-owned oil companies of the Gulf compete with U.S.

The Nor-Shipping Exhibition concluded June 6, 2003. Following were some of the major announcements during the week in Oslo. Kongsberg won a contract for the control systems for four LNG tankers scheduled to be built in Japan. The ships will carry LNG from the Snohvit field to the U.S., Spain and France. Two of the ships are being built for Hoegh shipping lines at Mitsubishi Shipyards, while the other two are being built at the Mitsui and Kawasaki shipyards. Kelvin Hughes was awarded type approval for its ECDIS-based Track Control System. This is the first Approval of its type to be granted by LR and covers the integration of the company's ECDIS and Autopilot products into a system meeting the new IEC 62065 track control performance standard.

While seeking to consolidate its existing LNG carrier workload by bidding for new tonnage to serve the Qatari export traffic and other projects, Spanish shipbuilder IZAR has intensified its research endeavors so as to create a broader business platform in the energy market. The group has thrown its weight behind a new initiative aimed at developing floating plant incorporating gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology to extract and convert gas from remote offshore fields into premium grade liquid products. The joint industry research and development project, known as Seagas, draws in IZAR Fene Shipyard (the former Astano establishment), Bermuda-based engineering corporation Foster Wheeler, and other partners from various disciplines.

As the sole shipbuilding organization outside eastern Asia with a current involvement in the construction of large LNG carriers, IZAR is determined to maintain a long-term position in a promising, higher value-added field of the newbuild market. The present business profile is based on a series of membrane-type vessels of 138,000-cu. m. capacity, contracted in recent years in the face of fierce international competition and oriental domination of gas tanker production. However, the gathering momentum behind the Spanish group's research and development drive has increased its offering to the LNG transportation sector beyond the impressive new generation of ships now taking form in Sestao and Puerto Real for Spanish and Norwegian interests.