REN: Portugal’s natural gas consumption hits 5-year high

Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), the operator of the Sines LNG terminal, said that last year’s natural gas consumption in Portugal reached the highest value since 2011.

Portugal’s natural gas consumption hit 11,571 GWh in 2016, down just 3.4 percent from the all-time high recorded in 2010, REN said in its statement, adding that these figures reinforce the strong growth in consumption over the last few months of the year.

In December, REN recorded a year-over-year increase of 28 percent in natural gas consumption with the power generation segment growing by 93 percent.

At the end of the year, the consumption of natural gas recorded an overall growth of 6.9 percent.

“The growth in consumption is related to the greater momentum of the segment concerning production of electrical energy using natural gas, which also presented its highest consumption since 2011, albeit still far from the values recorded in previous years.”

One-third from LNG

The Sines LNG terminal provided one-third of the total amount of gas consumed in 2016, while the larger part of the natural gas volumes entered Portugal via the interconnection pipeline with Spain, according to REN.

Portugal mostly imports the chilled fuel from Nigeria, Algeria and Qatar.

Worth mentioning, the Sines LNG terminal in April received the first cargo from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG export terminal in Louisiana.

This was the first U.S. LNG cargo produced from shale gas to reach Europe.

LNG World News Staff