EDF Group Commissions Dunkerque LNG Terminal

The first liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker Madrid Spirit docked at the Dunkerque LNG terminal’s jetty on July 8, marking the industrial start-up of the facility, the French electric utility company EDF Group said.

With the arrival of the 2004-built LNG tanker, the terminal received some 130,000 m3 of LNG, originating from a liquefaction plant in Bonny, Nigeria.

“The arrival of the first tanker is a key milestone, the fruit of faultless dedication from all teams working on the project. It represents the end of the construction and the industrial start-up of the terminal,” Marc Girard, President of Dunkerque LNG, said.

Once the tanker was moored and connected to the discharging arm, the facility began the cooling process to -163°C.

The company said that the tank will be discharged slowly over the course of 7 to 10 days.

Over the following 10 to 15 days, gas produced from the evaporation of some of this LNG will be sent to the flare.

Once cooled, the terminal storage installations will send the gas out to the GRTgaz transmission network, at a low rate initially to test each of the terminal’s units.

A second vessel is scheduled to arrive in the first half of August, to carry out test runs of the whole system and performance tests and the company said that the commercial operations could start at the end of September.

The terminal, which was constructed over a period of four and a half years, underwent several test runs of the installation without gas during the last few months, which included stress conditions tests, commissioning of utilities, partially cooling with nitrogen down to -110°C.