Madeira Marks LNG Milestone
The Portuguese island of Madeira early this month reached a milestone in natural gas consumption.
Since its start on March 21 2014, a so-called LNG Virtual Pipeline implemented by Portuguese logistics firm Grupo Sousa, under a joint venture with the country's main oil and gas company Galp, has supplied more than 100,000 metric tons of LNG to the publicly-owned and operated power plant on the island. Sousa made the announcement in a statement received by NGW August 7, although dated four days earlier.
The total means that, in the four years and four months since March 2014, more than 1.35 terawatt-hours (0.125bn m3) of gas has been delivered to the Portuguese island and its quarter-million inhabitants, accounting for up to 25% of the overall energy mix on Madeira, equivalent to an annual LNG supply of around 32,500 tons.
"The continuous supply of natural gas through the LNG Virtual Pipeline - the largest operation of its kind in the Atlantic - represents a daily challenge, said Sousa in a statement.
LNG is transported in standardised ISO tanks all the way from Sines on the mainland to Madeira. Sousa owns 55 such ISO containers (shown in the banner photo) and these represent its 'virtual pipeline, as the tanks are trucked from the Sines LNG import terminal outside Lisbon to a ferry port the opposite side of Portugal's capital from where they are shipped the final 550 nautical miles by sea to Madeira. The LNG at Sines is supplied by Galp.
In addition, Sousa and Galp also conducted the first LNG bunkering operation in Portugal and on a small Atlantic island, when on November 20 2017 in Madeira's main port of Funchal, they deliver LNG to the cruise ship AIDAPrima; 13 such bunkering operations were successfully conducted at the port between then and April 2018.
Sousa calculates deliveries of LNG to Madeira to date have achieved greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions since March 2014 - relative to fuel oil - of over 180,000 tons of CO2, 10,000 tons of sulphur oxides (SOx). It also said that LNG has emitted none of the harmful particulates previously emitted by the 'Vitoria 3' power plant, when it burned fuel oil, thus benefiting the citizens of Funchal and nearby Camara de Lobos.
(Banner photo, showing an ISO truck leaving the Sines LNG terminal, is courtesy of Grupo Sousa)