The Singapore company LNG Alliance will make a final decision on the construction of a terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Port of Bar in the first quarter of next year, the company announced.
In May, the Singapore company completed the primary feasibility study on the construction and equipping of the LNG terminal in Bar and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Port of Bar on the preparation of further detailed studies for the new terminal through which, for the needs of Montenegro, as well as several other countries in the Balkans, ensured the supply of gas as a new energy source, Vesti writes.
Then the Minister of Capital Investments, Ervin Ibrahimović, met in Podgorica with the vice president of the LNG Alliance company, Dhananjoy Kumar Das.
In December last year, that company signed a memorandum of understanding with Elektroprivreda (EPCG), which envisages the preparation of feasibility studies for the construction of an LNG terminal in Bar, as well as new gas-fired power plants in Bar and possibly in Podgorica.
According to that arrangement, LNG Allienace would build the infrastructure needed to import gas that would arrive in Bar by ships – LNG tankers, as well as the infrastructure needed to bring gas to new power plants that would be managed by EPCG. This would include the construction of a gas pipeline from the terminal to the location of the power plant in Bar, that is, in Podgorica.
The Singaporean company, however, reckons that the LNG terminal they would build in Bar could supply gas not only to Montenegro, but also to the surrounding countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Serbia, because currently on the coast of the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea in a length of almost a thousand kilometers, from the Albanian-Greek border in the south to the LNG terminal on the island of Krk in Croatia in the north, there is no other terminal for gas and the import of this energy by ship transport.
Regardless of the absence of gas pipelines from Bar to the hinterland and potential markets in the wider region, the LNG Alliance reckons that their new terminal in Bar can serve customers in the wider region primarily through so-called virtual gas pipelines using special ISO containers that store gas, which are identical in dimensions to regular 20- and 40-foot shipping containers, and easy to transport by rail or truck to end users.
– With the depth of the sea in the port’s water area, which is sufficient not to require additional deepening, and the outstanding meteorological and oceanographic characteristics here, a wide range of LNG tankers will be able to deliver liquefied gas to Bar at the most favorable prices, which will result in a reliable and favorable supply. with liquefied gas for consumers in the greater part of the Balkans – it was announced from the LNG Alliance company.
That company intends not to build large storage facilities for liquid gas on land in Bar, but to make the backbone of the new terminal a FSU (Floating storage unit), i.e. a floating storage.
An FSU is usually an older LNG tanker that has been adapted to its new role of serving as a stationary transfer station and storage facility for LNG brought into port by other ships.
However, before delivery to customers, the liquid gas should be regasified, i.e., from the liquid state to which it was brought by cooling to minus 162 degrees Celsius, it should be transformed back into a gaseous state by gradual heating.
The LNG Alliance has not yet stated whether the regasification plant at the Bar terminal would be installed on the FSU itself or possibly on the coast, but it would most likely function on the principle of heat exchangers that would use the natural temperature of the sea for regasification of LNG.
The Singapore company calculates that the new LNG terminal in Bar should initially have a capacity of 400,000 tons per year, and its capacity, in accordance with the growth of demand and the expansion of the market, could be relatively easily and quickly increased three times to an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons, local media reports.
