Turkey Set to Inaugurate 1st FSRU
Turkey’s first floating LNG import terminal has arrived at Aliaga, near Izmir on the country's western coast, according to press reports, the ship’s owner Hoegh LNG, and ship tracking services. The country already has two onshore LNG terminals.
Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah reported December 14 that the floating regasification and storage unit had berthed at Aliaga. It quoted energy minister Berat Albayrak saying that the FSRU, originally built in 2009, would be inaugurated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on December 23.
Shipowner Hoegh LNG website’s Fleet section lists the Neptune as an FSRU chartered to Engie and “in operation” in Turkey. Its regas capacity is given as 750mn ft3/d (7.75bn m3/yr, or 5.6mn mt/yr). The ship was formerly classed as a shuttle and regasification vessel (SRV) named GDF Suez Neptune.
Ship tracking services indicate that Neptune has been berthed at Aliaga since at least December 17, having sailed from Montoir in western France on December 4 to reach western Turkey December 11.
Reports indicated it carried a cargo from Engie and that the FSRU may now be on a medium-term sub-charter to a joint venture of Turkey’s Kolin and Kalyon groups. Kolin owns Izmir Gas, a local gas distributor that supplies some 3bn m3/yr.
Turkish gas consumption peaks in the winter, so LNG storage is helpful (Photo credit: Nasa)
Turkey has two onshore LNG terminals already in operation: the Marmara Ereglisi terminal (owned by state Botas) with regas capacity of 6.2bn m3/yr which opened in 1994, and the private Egegaz terminal at Aliaga with 6bn m3/yr capacity that opened in 2006.
The two terminals enabled Turkey to import 5.35mn mt of LNG (7.4bn m3) in 2015, mainly from Algeria, Qatar and Nigeria, according to LNG Importers Association GIIGNL.
That equated to one-sixth of Turkey’s roughly 44bn m3 consumption that year of which most, according to BP annual statistics, came by pipeline from Russia (26.6bn m3), Iran (7.8bn m3) and Azerbaijan (5.3bn m3).
Mark Smedley