With the agreement between the US and Europe on the new supplies of liquid natural gas (LNG) – 15 billion cubic meters more immediately and 50 more from 2030 – the tender to strengthen the European regasification system officially starts. Italy, as the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani announced in Parliament in recent days, has already moved in time but the competition at this point becomes great and will certainly be very fierce because the hunger for gas is strong and replace the over 150 billion cubic meters of methane that Russia supplies to Europe every year (29 only to Italy) will not be easy.
Floating and flexible
The “cheapest and most flexible and lowest cost way for the system” to exploit the new availability of LNG is to prepare new regasification capacity using floating units anchored near the ports. And for this reason the Italian government during the week already commissioned Snam to acquire a ship equipped for storage and regasification (or an “Fsru”, an acronym that stands for “floating storage regasification unit”).
Already today the company led by Marco Alverà, in addition to managing the national pipeline network, owns the Panigaglia terminal, has a 49% stake in the Livorno Olt and a 7.3% stake in the terminal located off the Rovigo coast. and therefore has all the know-how necessary to manage such an operation.
The problem is that around the world of «FSRU» there are barely forty and now everyone wants them. Starting with the Germans, affected as much as we are by the need to free themselves from Russian gas, and who, on the contrary, do not have any regasification plants. “The FSRU units – as Cingolani explained – cost a few hundred million if rented, while the new ones today have a strong price increase and long waiting periods”. Having said this, he later admitted, “it will not be easy: there is in fact an international competition for the grabbing of these ships, the availability of which is however limited”.
First ship already in the sights
According to La Stampa, the first floating regasification terminal has already been identified, but it will take time to complete the operation. At Snam they have been working on the operation for days, but once a general agreement has been defined through a due diligence, the conditions in which the ship to be purchased is found will be verified and only afterwards can the deal be closed. In particular, the focus is on large ships, cost estimated at a few hundred million euros, each capable of ensuring an annual capacity for injecting into the network of 5 billion cubic meters of gas, which corresponds to approximately 15% of the share that today we import from Russia.
Where to place the ships
Where will the two new regasification vessels be located? At ports – which must have adequate dimensions and depths suitable for receiving gas carriers arriving from the USA and the rest of the world – providing for moorings at the quay or offshore if this solution is chosen. It seems that Sicily is excluded, in order to avoid overloading the pipeline network in the face of the already concrete possibility of increasing supplies from Algeria, there are two areas designated to host the new plants: the upper Tyrrhenian, or Piombino, and the Adriatic . In this second case, however, there are two options: Ravenna or Puglia, in the latter case also assuming a solution on the Ionian coast.
Once all the authorizations have been obtained – but to cut the time Cingolani is preparing a decree that attributes strategic interest to these new plants – the FSRUs will be connected to the national network of gas pipelines by land or sea-land as appropriate and possibly the docks of the ports will have to be adapted. Estimated time for putting them into service: 12-18 months from the moment of authorization. Except hitches.