Importing liquid natural gas is going to be essential for Europe
to keep heating and electricity supplies running this winter and next.
We’re heading toward the only fixed LNG terminal in Greece, which receives, stores and turns
this critical fuel back into gas. That gas is then piped around the country.
Natural gas is often found in secluded, far-flung areas.
But its portability in the liquid form means that it can be shipped anywhere in the world.
Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, can be used in the power sector to make electricity
and in the industrial sector to make fertilizers and petrochemicals.
It can also be used for cooking and to heat homes.
But how is LNG made?
First, natural gas is extracted from the ground. It's then cleaned up and sent to a plant,
where it's cooled to approximately minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit
or minus 160 degrees Celsius.
By turning the gas into a liquid, its volume is 600 times smaller
allowing it to be safely and easily transported on LNG carriers.
Once the liquid arrives at its destination, it’s turned back into gas.
Aristotelis Nastos is the plant manager at the Revithoussa LNG Terminal,
the only LNG import terminal in Greece.
This is the gasification process. The LNG is in minus 160 and must be in positive temperature.
So, we had the heat exchangers with seawater, we take the thermal energy from the seawater,
which is 20 degrees normally, and we need this thermal energy to gasify the LNG.
What happens after the regasification process? Where does the gas go?
The gas goes to the grid, in the pressure about from 50 to 60 Bars, and comes all over Greece,
and also the countries near Greece, Bulgaria and other European countries”
There are two main types of LNG import facilities,
Fixed terminals and ships called Floating Storage Regasification Units or FSRUs.
Fixed terminals are very costly and take years to build, unlike FSRUs,
which can be leased for a fixed number of years and are moored near a pipeline.
The downside to the more flexible FSRUs is that they cannot process large quantities of LNG,
unlike the fixed terminals on land.
The biggest exporters of LNG are Australia, Qatar and the United States.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S.
has stepped up its supply efforts to Europe, doubling its LNG exports to the continent.
The U.S. is set to be the world’s biggest LNG exporter.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, Europe was heavily reliant on Russian pipeline gas.
As Russian supplies started dwindling,
Europe had to act fast and pivot away from Russian gas to LNG.
What has it been like here in the current energy crisis?
How has your regular business activity changed?
Normally, we receive four to five vessels per month.
And now with the crisis, we are receiving 10 vessels per month.
Also, the regasification rate is doubled, normally is five to 800 cubic meters per hour
and now we are increasing up to the maximum which is 1,400 cubic meters per hour.
The fresh supply of LNG allowed Europe to successfully fill its gas storage sites
to 95% ahead of the 2022 winter season.
The influx of LNG to Europe has meant
that storage facilities on the continent are filled to the brim.
It’s a happy problem, but it means that Europe is now scrambling for new capacity.
While Europe’s LNG infrastructure capacity is significant, access is uneven across countries.
France, Spain, Italy and the U.K. all have their own fixed terminals,
while countries like Germany have none. Germany, Europe’s largest gas importer,
was instead reliant on Russian pipeline gas.
Without it, Germany and others had to hire floating terminals to tide through the crisis.
Plans are afoot to build more than a dozen more LNG import facilities over the coming years.
I spoke to Greece’s Environment and Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas.
How would you say Europe is doing in terms of its efforts
to replace those Russian pipeline gas flows with LNG?
Europe is trying very hard. Greece is going to be
transformed to the main entrance gate, import gate of LNG for the cell system in Europe.
But it takes time for those infrastructure projects to be completed.
Greece currently has one terminal here on Revithoussa that can receive LNG,
temporarily store, regasify and supply it to the country’s network of pipelines.
A new Floating Storage Unit has recently been added to the
existing facilities at Revithoussa which will increase its storage capacity by 70%.
Unlike an FSRU which has regasification capabilities, an FSU can only store the LNG in its liquid form
until there’s space at the nearby terminal to begin the regasification process.
Laura Page is the Senior LNG Analyst at Kpler,
a data and analytics firm focused on commodity markets.
We're seeing a lot of import terminals coming online over the next couple of months and years,
to enable Europe to import more LNG, particularly from the United States.
How flexible is this new LNG import capacity that Europe is investing in?
Many of those terminals are being charted for a period of five years.
So once a period of five years is over, and they can either be rechartered
for a shorter period of time, or they can float elsewhere and
go to somewhere else in the world.
While all this new capacity in the EU should help ease storage bottlenecks,
supply of LNG is the bigger concern.
As business activity starts to recover in parts of Asia, especially China,
stiff competition for LNG could lead to higher prices.
For now, Europe looks likely to avert a worst-case scenario this winter with muted demand from Asia
and a milder than expected start to the season. However, experts are warning against complacency.
Maria Rita Galli is the CEO of DESFA, Greece’s natural gas transmission system operator.
How worried are you about Europe’s energy situation, either this winter or next?
The situation for this winter is certainly in a much stable situation because more than 90% of
the total storage capacity on Europe has been filled. The difficulty will be for the next summer
to replace the gas that will be utilized during the winter.
So the key question for next year is, what will the reopening in China mean
for China's LNG demand going forward? And will that pull gas away from Europe?
LNG is also not a long-term solution to Europe’s energy problems, given its green energy ambitions.
Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany aimed to abandon fossil-fueled power by 2035.
For now, LNG is seen as an important fuel to get Europe through the current energy crisis.
And it doesn’t hurt that some of Europe’s new permanent LNG infrastructure
can be converted to work with renewable resources in the future.
Over the longer term, we will be moving more towards a renewable environment and gas
is a great bridging fuel because obviously the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't flow
all of the time. So, gas is a backup fuel for when those situations arise.
Do you see the risk that this investment into LNG in Greece and across many countries
in Europe as undermining efforts to power the green transition?
Nobody is planning infrastructure that is going finally all projects that are going to end up
to be stranded assets. The LNG terminals
could be used in the future for hydrogen maybe.
We have to plan projects in a very well-balanced manner.