Enagas Profits Rise, LatAm Fortunes Still Mixed
Spanish gas grid Enagas announced a slight upturn in 1Q net profits on April 25, and updated markets about the mixed fortunes of its Peruvian and Chilean subsidiaries and a novel type of LNG bunkering operation that it conducted this week with Repsol.
Enagas 1Q net profit of €102.8mn was 1.6% higher than its 1Q2016 result. It noted that affiliate companies provided 21.6% of Enagas net profit. But the recent increase of its equity stake in Chile's GNLQ terminal meant that net debt increased from €5.09bn at end-2016 to €5.68bn at the end of 1Q2017.
Gas demand in Spain increased by 8.4% year on year to 96.5 TWh (9bn m3) in 1Q2017, said Enagas, buoyed by demand from homes due to cooler weather, but particularly a 16.5% increase in use by gas-fired power plants. It expects full-year 2017 overall gas demand to be 2% higher than in 2016.
In Peru, Enagas announced April 24 it had increased its stake in Peruvian gas grid operator Compania Operadora de Gas del Amazonas (Coga), which has a 1,500km network, from 30% to 51% for $8.86mn; Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's subsidiary Carmen Corp holds the remaining 49%.
Peru – still a waiting game
Enagas retains a 28.94% stake in Transportadora de Gas del Perú (TgP). But its stake in the Gasoducto Sur Peruano (GSP) stays in limbo since that GSP concession was terminated by Peru’s government January 23 after the largest GSP shareholder Odebrecht failed to satisfy Lima that GSP would be adequately financed.
On April 25, Enagas said that the Peruvian government’s agency for promotion of private investment (Proinversion) “will be the coordinator of the process of calculating the net book value of the concession assets and the new tender” of GSP. In February, Enagas reserved the right to invoke international arbitration if it felt, following this process, that it was being expropriated. On April 25, it said it was “working closely with the Peruvian government to ensure the success of this process.”
Gasoducto Sur Peruano takes gas from the Camisea field to southern Peru (Photo credit: GSP)
First ‘pipe to ship’ LNG bunkering
Enagas, together with bunker supplier Repsol, said that for the first time in Europe that they had supplied LNG as a ship’s fuel to a vessel from a regasification plant. The operation lasted five hours and took place at Enagas’s Cartagena terminal in southeast Spain (it did not say on which day).
“This type of supply, pioneering in Europe, is known as pipe-to-ship bunkering, and was carried out using flexible cryogenic transfer hoses connecting the ship directly to the terminal. The ship, Damia Desgagnés, received 370 m3 of LNG,” said Enagas. The Canadian-flagged vessel can run on heavy fuel oil, marine diesel oil, or LNG; it is the first asphalt tanker that can be LNG-propelled.
Mark Smedley