Italy eyes FSRUs to ramp up LNG imports: press
Italy's energy transition minister has said the government could procure two floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) to increase imports of LNG, Reuters reported March 22.
Speaking to a parliamentary hearing, Roberto Cingolani said he has authorised state-controlled Italian midstream gas firm Snam to negotiate on acquiring one FSRU and leasing a second.
|
Advertisement: The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) NGC’s HSSE strategy is reflective and supportive of the organisational vision to become a leader in the global energy business. |
Unnamed sources earlier told Reuters the two vessels would offer 10 bn m3/year of regasification capacity, bringing Italy's overall capacity above 25bn m3/yr. The FSRUs will likely be based in the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic sea and will connect to sea ports close to existing pipelines. Both would be classified as "strategic" national assets.
Italy is ramping up LNG imports to reduce Russian gas purchase, which currently come to around 30bn m3/year, having held talks with LNG exporters Qatar, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and Algeria in recent weeks. Rapidly procuring FSRUs offers Italy a near-term solution to bring in more gas, and an option also being pursued elsewhere in Europe.
A source told Reuters that by winter as many as six new FSRUs could be recruited for European LNG imports. LNG imports to the continent averaged 14.9 bn ft3 (422mn m3)/day in January 2022, as the gap between European natural gas prices and Asian spot rates for LNG narrowed, diverting more cargoes to European buyers, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Cingolani has said substitutes for around 20bn m3/yr of Russian gas supplies could be found in the "near to medium term.", but it will be 2025 at the earliest before imports from Russia can be replaced entirely.
Italy currently has three LNG terminals with combined 15.3bn m3/yr capacity, at La Spezia (3.5bn m3/yr), Rovigo (8bn m3/yr) and Toscana (3.75bn m3/yr) . Despite being the fourth country in the world to build an LNG terminal, Italy's regasification capacity as a proportion of gas consumption is lower than the Netherlands, the UK and France. It imported 12.1bn m3 of LNG in 2020, enough to meet around 18% of national gas demand (67.7bn m3) that year, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.