Finland leases LNG vessel

  • 2022-05-20
  • BNS/TBT Staff

TALLINN – The Finnish government announced on Friday that Gasgrid Finland and US company Excelerate Energy have signed a ten-year lease agreement for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal vessel, Exemplar, and Finland hopes to complete the terminal facility on its southern coast before winter, Postimees reported on Friday.

Finland's Finance Minister Annika Saarikko said the LNG floating terminal, or FSRU, which will be deployed next winter, will allow Russian gas to be abandoned on both sides of the Gulf of Finland. Supplies of Russian gas to Finland may be discontinued already in the coming days, Finland's public broadcaster Yle said.

The storage and supply capacity of the vessel is sufficient for the gas needs of both Finland and Estonia, Gasgrid Finland said in a press release.

While it was previously planned that a floating terminal with regasification capability would first be set up in the northwestern Estonian port of Paldiski for at least a year and then move on to Finland, where gas consumption is three to four times higher than in Estonia, then now Finns are hoping to have also their own LNG reception facility ready before the winter.

According to the Finnish government, the FSRU will be located in southern Finland, but no specific location has been announced. The necessary port facilities will be built in both Finland and Estonia. If they are completed in Estonia before Finland, the terminal vessel can be temporarily berthed in Estonia until the necessary infrastructure is completed in Finland, the Finnish minister said.

The LNG terminal vessel coming to Finland is 291 meters long and 43 meters wide. It has a volume of about 151,000 cubic meters, which corresponds to about 68,000 tons of LNG when fully loaded. The amount means approximately 1,050 GWh of energy. LNG is delivered to the terminal by tankers from the global market, and the tankers are estimated to visit the terminal 2-3 times a month. Reloading of the vessel always takes about a day.

The project schedule will be specified in June. The total cost of the LNG terminal vessel project with the 10-year lease is estimated to be at 460 million euros, in addition to which there are separate costs associated with the volume of use.