(Finance) – Yesterday night (between 4 and 5 May), the phase of mooring from the LNG tanker Maran Gas Kalymnoswhich transports the first load of preparatory gas for the start-up of the first set of safety checks and tests of the equipment and pipelines that make up the plant.
The two ships, both moored side by side on the east quay of the north dock of the port of Piombino, were visited by representatives of national and local institutions such as the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratinthe Extraordinary Commissioner for the Piombino regasification terminal and President of the Tuscany Region Eugene Giani and the President of the Port Authority of Piombino, Luciano Guerrieriaccompanied on the plant tour by Stefano Venier, managing director of snamwho commented as follows: “The arrival of the first load of gas that will allow us to carry out the test and set-up phase of the plant represents another important step in providing the country with an infrastructure that is fundamental to safety and diversification Proof of this is the fact that 86% of input capacity has already been sold for 20 years to several operators, and all of it in the next three years. We started this process 11 months ago, with the purchase of Golar Tundra, and for six months we have been at work with about 450 people in the construction sites on land and on the quays, employing 150 sub-contractors and suppliers, about half of whom are from Tuscany.A complex, innovative but not unusual project for a company like Snam which has been guaranteeing the country’s energy infrastructure for 80 years”.
The LNG tanker Maran Gas Kalymnos, carrying a loading Eni with 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, departed from Damietta in Egypt for Piombino on 27 April. 294.9 meters long, 46.4 meters wide and 55 meters high, she was launched in 2021.
The ship, with the support of 4 tugs, entered the port of Piombino yesterday night, with a maneuver of about two hours, when the ferry traffic was now over. The LNG tanker has been moored at Golar Tundra and will transfer liquefied natural gas through 6 hoses to FSRU tanks to be degassed and fed into the national transportation network.
The Golar Tundra is 292.5 meters long, 43.4 meters wide and 55 meters high, it is equipped with 4 tanks for the storage of 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas and a continuous regasification capacity of 5 billion cubic meters per year. year.
THE TESTS – The tests will begin with the connection and cooling (“cooldown”) of the flexible pipes that connect the LNG tanker to the FSRU with the consequent transfer of approximately 70,000 cubic meters of LNG (out of a total of 170,000) to the Golar Tundra tanks. The next phase of the tests envisages the launch of the regasification test phases (“commissioning”), which will involve the setting up of the necessary plants and systems, with the sending of part of the gas into the network, through the new pipeline up to the point of entered the national network.
After about a couple of weeks, the LNG tanker will return to the port to be moored again at the Golar Tundra, to carry out the second unloading for the remaining 90,000 cubic meters of LNG. The final test phase involves verifying the performance of various regasification profiles (“Acceptance Test”).
90% of the cargo will be placed on the network to feed national consumption while the remaining 10% will be used to guarantee the ship’s operability.
During the test period, around a hundred crew and ground personnel will be involved. In the future, it is expected that the staff assigned to the regasification terminal will be around sixty people, of which around 40 will be crew.
THE SITE – 450 people worked on the construction site during the peak phase, including contracts and subcontracts, with forty employees dedicated to managing the works; 21 subcontractors – 3 from the province of Livorno and 7 from Tuscany – and 147 suppliers, of which 27 from Livorno and 35 from Tuscany. More than 300 workers resided in the area during the travel period. More than 300,000 hours of work have been invested to ensure the highest standards in terms of ship safety and performance.
The works for the adaptation of the mooring quay and the connection line to the National Network involved the installation of approximately 17,000 meters of pipes of various diameters, the casting of approximately 3,000 cubic meters of concrete, the construction of over 250 tons of metal carpentry, the installation of almost 180 km of electric and instrumentation cables, the construction of the underground crossing of the stretch of sea between the quay and the Ponte D’Oro area for a length of approximately 1,320 metres, thus avoiding any interference with the seabed, and which is the longest drilling performed in Europe with a 1,200 mm diameter pipeline using the Direct Pipe methodology.
LIQUID NATURAL GAS – Since the beginning of the gas emergency made more acute by the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, LNG has assumed an increasingly central role. In 2022, gas imported in the form of LNG represented 18.8% of the gas introduced into the national network, while since the beginning of 2023 it has represented around 24.3%.
There are already three regasification plants in Italy, the first of which, owned by Snam, has been active since the early 1970s in Panigaglia, in the province of La Spezia, and has a regasification capacity of 3.5 billion cubic meters a year. Off the coast of Livorno there is OLT (shared by Snam and Igneo Infrastructure Partners) with a regasification capacity of 3.7 billion cubic meters of gas per year, which could reach around 5 billion cubic meters from 2024. The largest is located in Porto Viro, Rovigo (ExxonMobil, Qatar Energy and Snam), with a regasification capacity of 9 billion cubic meters per year.
Finally, Snam will put another floating regasification plant into operation, the BW Singapore vessel, sister ship to the Golar Tundra which will be moored on an offshore platform off the coast of Ravenna, with a regasification capacity of 5 billion cubic meters per year which will come into operation at the end of 2024.