Lubmin (dpa/mv) – The floating liquefied natural gas terminal intended for Lubmin entered the industrial port there on Friday. The special ship “Neptune” was towed into the port entrance under high security precautions. Then it should moor at the specially prepared feeder.
The “Neptune” had previously been in the port of Mukran on Rügen for a good three weeks, among other things to prepare it. In order for the ship, which is more than 280 meters long, to pass through the shallow Greifswalder Bodden, it first had to drain the ballast water. It was towed backwards in the direction of the connection point to the long-distance gas network. The “Neptune” is the largest ship that has ever entered the port. This had previously been cleared. The police were on site with boats, numerous officers on land and a helicopter.
The “Neptune” is a so-called FSRU (Floating Storage and Regasification Unit) that not only stores liquefied natural gas (LNG), but can also heat it up and turn it back into gas. Up to 5.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas can be fed in via the terminal each year.
The terminal is to be supplied by smaller shuttle ships that fetch the LNG from a larger tank storage ship on the Baltic Sea. This in turn is to be supplied by tankers. The first of three scheduled shuttle ships arrived in Rügen last week. The larger tank storage ship is expected to carry a first load of LNG in the Baltic Sea next week. Permissions from the country and the EU are still missing for the commissioning of the terminal.
The first FSRU was only moored at its location in Germany in Wilhelmshaven, Lower Saxony, on Thursday. Another is to come to Brunsbüttel in Schleswig-Holstein in the near future. The three terminals are intended to mark the beginning of Germany’s development of its own LNG import infrastructure to replace Russian natural gas, which is no longer supplied.
