LNG Croatia Misses Targets
LNG Croatia has replaced its managing director for the third time in little over a year, and an Open Season for those wishing to book import capacity has been delayed.
The project company, seeking to develop a floating LNG import terminal by 2020, has appointed Barbara Doric, formerly head of the national upstream regulator Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency, to replace Goran Francic, local news agency Total Croatia News reported April 20.
LNG Croatia told NGW early 2018 that it expected to take a final investment decision (FID) in 2Q2018. That might have made a project start-up late 2020 still viable. Doric has since told a Croatian newspaper that realisation by 2020 is still feasible. However that timeline now looks in doubt.
That’s because LNG Croatia itself announced April 20 that it had postponed the deadline for final bids in its Open Season until June 22. Although it said the postponement was because “interest in capacity booking was higher” than expected, and it had been asked for an extension, Total News Croatia reported a week ago that INA was the only company to have submitted one low-volume capacity bid by the original deadline earlier this month, already deferred once from mid-March.
LNG Croatia this month has not responded to NGW enquiries about its Open Season, so it's unclear too if any progress has been made in the process - underway since late last year - to procure the FSRU. In December 2017 the EU formally agreed to grant €101.4mn ($122mn) towards the Krk island-based project, subject to FID. The 2.6bn m3/yr project's total cost was estimated earlier this year by LNG Croatia at around €360mn ($440mn). LNG Croatia's current owners are Croatian electricity utility HEP and gas network operator Plinacro, both state-owned.