FID on Gate third LNG jetty expected soon

Gasunie and Vopak, the main shareholders of the Dutch LNG import terminal in Rotterdam, plan to make a final investment decision to build a third jetty for small LNG ships in the first half of this year, Stefaan Adriaens, Commercial Manager of the Gate Terminal told LNG World News in an interview at the terminal site.

The third jetty would be built just for small LNG ships up to 20,000 cbm and “later on it can be increased.”

“A lot of people are working hard in securing contracts and financing for the LNG jetty project, and if we take FID this summer than the jetty could become operational in 2016,” Adriaens said.

“Once we have a third jetty it would be relatively easy to build the fourth jetty, and also we have enough space to build two additional LNG tanks on the part of the land where the third jetty would be located.”

The jetty project is currently under appraisal by the European Investment Bank for a EUR 5o million loan.

Aside to its import and export capabilities, the Gate terminal also started offering truck loading services as of January this year when Primagaz Benelux loaded the first trailer of liquefied natural gas at the terminal.

“We had close to 40 LNG trucks from January this year and I expect that we will do about 250-300 trucks in 2014,” he said.

As more and more truck filling stations are being built in the Netherlands and in the neighbouring countries, Adriaens expects increased interest in this service.

“If you look at our neighbours, Zeebrugge in Belgium plans 2000 trucks this year and Montoir in France is doing a couple of trucks per day, so I think we will also have a good amount of trucks being filled at our truck loading facilities next year.”

According to Adriaens, seven LNG tankers docked at the Dutch only LNG import terminal this year and two of them were exported to Japan and Brazil.

“This year we also expect quite a few reloadings for small LNG vessels. Last year we had 23 ship movements of which 5 big reloads, 3 small reloadings and 6 small unloads, so it would be realistic that we will do about thirty ship movements in 2014,” he added.