Skangas Acquires Norwegian LNG Unit
Europe’s largest small-scale LNG distributor Skangas has signed an agreement to buy the Risavika LNG production plant in southwest Norway from local utility Lyse Energi, it was announced on March 17.
The unit's production capacity is 300,000 metric tons per year, and its storage tank can hold 30,000 m3. The acquisition also includes the LNG marine bunkering facility there.
Skangas is 51%-owned by Finnish gas supplier Gasum and 49% by Lyse Energi and led by CEO Tor Morten Osmundsen. Gasum bought its majority Skangas stake in 2014 when it also signed a tolling agreement for Risavika’s full annual capacity, although the plant until now remained owned by Lyse.
Gasum CEO Johanna Lamminen said: “This acquisition is part of our LNG business development and further strengthens our position as the leading LNG player in the Nordic market.”
“Lyse is very pleased that we have now taken the next step in the transaction that began in 2014. Skangas now has a complete value chain within LNG and, strengthened by this, will now enter an exciting market as a leading LNG player in the Nordic market,” said Lyse CEO Eimund Nygaard.
Neither company, nor Skangas, disclosed the transaction price.
Risavika, near Stavanger in southwest Norway, liquefies offshore gas that is piped ashore nearby. It mainly serves the Nordic market but the bunkering port is increasingly active.
Skangas performed more than 5,000 truck deliveries of LNG in 2014 to industries and utilities in Scandinavia, and also has a number of small LNG vessels on charters that it uses to distribute the fuel to its other bunkering ports and terminals in the region at Lysekil in Sweden and Ora in southern Norway. It is also building Finland’s first LNG terminal, due to open this autumn. Skangas also has a 20,000 t/y liquefaction unit at Porvoo in Finland that was developed by Gasum.
Its main competitors are Royal Dutch Shell-owned Gasnor and the Bomin-Linde joint venture of Germany's Marquard & Bahls.
The Statoil-run Snohvit liquefaction plant in the far north of Norway, at 4.1mn t/yr, has a liquefaction capacity 12 times greater than Risavika - however its cargoes principally go to long-haul markets including Asia, South America and southern Europe.
Mark Smedley