Lubmin (dpa/mv) – The ship fleet of the liquefied natural gas terminal planned in Lubmin is receiving further growth. With the “Speapeak Hispania”, the liquefied natural gas tanker planned as an interim storage facility at sea is also on its way to the Baltic Sea. According to the company Deutsche Regas, the ship is to take liquefied natural gas (LNG) from other tankers and hand it over to smaller tankers, which transport it through the shallow Greifswalder Bodden to the actual terminal in the Lubminer industrial port.
According to ship tracking services on the Internet, the Spanish-flagged “Speapeak Hispania” left Egypt in early December and was west of Portugal on Thursday morning. Accordingly, it should still be a few days before the ship arrives in the Baltic Sea.
Last week, one of the three smaller shuttle ships planned for the transport through the Greifswalder Bodden arrived off Rügen. At the end of November, the “Neptune”, the first special ship for converting liquefied natural gas into the gaseous state, arrived there in Germany. It has yet to be moved to Lubmin. Deutsche Regas is waiting for approvals from the state and the EU.
According to earlier company information, the terminal in Lubmin could be made operational at short notice. This could make it one of the first LNG terminals to go into operation in Germany, alongside the two terminals in Wilhelmshaven in Lower Saxony and Brunsbüttel in Schleswig-Holstein. More are planned.
When it comes to replacing Russian pipeline gas, Germany is relying, among other things, on importing liquefied natural gas by ship. However, the short-term planned capacity is only a fraction of what has come through the pipeline in recent years.