The floating LNG terminal intended for Lubmin is to cover the last stretch of the way to the place of use – not an easy task given the size of the ship.
Lubmin (dpa/mv) – A good three weeks after arriving off Rügen, the floating liquefied natural gas terminal intended for Lubmin will be relocated to its place of use. According to ship tracking services on the Internet, the special ship “Neptune” left the roadstead in front of the port of Mukran on the island of Rügen on Friday night. According to the company Deutsche Regas, the ship, which is more than 280 meters long, should reach the industrial port of Lubmin during the day.
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. The terminal should be able to feed up to 5.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually into the gas pipelines that run in the immediate vicinity of the port.
The ship initially went to Mukran for preparations. In order to pass the shallow Greifswalder Bodden, it had to be made easier, for example by discharging ballast water. Another prerequisite for the transfer is largely calm.
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 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.
