Liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices at the top do nothing. Since pipelines have been delivering Russian gas sparingly, European countries are flocking to floating liquefied natural gas regasification units, even if it means putting the energy transition on hold. Everyone is fighting over these big tankers known by their acronym FSRU (Floating Storage and Regasification Units) on which the LNG carriers are moored in the ports. And for good reason. Real factories on water, they are able to heat the liquid gas – imported at minus 160° – to a very high temperature to bring it back to the gaseous state so that it can be injected into the networks.
Faster and less expensive to deploy than their counterparts on dry land, these imported floating terminals have one drawback: they are rare. A big thirty in the world to break everything. They are therefore increasingly coveted as the EU seeks to diversify its supplier countries to completely free itself from Vladimir Putin’s gas. Germany, ill-equipped to receive LNG, has expressed the wish to buy or lease four of them, Italy wants to acquire two.
The government is accelerating
France, although less exposed than its neighbours, is in turn throwing itself into the fray to complete the four land import terminals of Dunkirk, Fos-sur-mer (2) and Montoir-de-Bretagne whose capacities risk to be quickly saturated. Only a few days after the project leaked to the press, Elisabeth Borne confirmed last Thursday that an FSRU – the first on the French coast – would soon join the port of Le Havre. Sign of a certain feverishness at the highest level of the State.
According to Agnès Pannier Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition, the installation will be operational from winter 2023 and capable of supplying “ nearly 10% of France’s annual gas consumption “. On the move: TotalEnergies, which will provide a floating unit repatriated from China, GRTgaz, which will connect it to its transmission network, and Haropa. The establishment, which manages the ports of the Seine, will ensure the arrival of the terminal safely and will develop the mooring quay.
A deputy’s warning
Things didn’t drag on. The location has already been chosen after several sites have been investigated. The future unit will be moored on the Bougainville wharf, not far from where the foundations of the future Fécamp offshore wind farm are being built. ” It is the site that presents the best compromise because it is accessible from a nautical point of view, it is very far from permanent residents and surrounded by spaces that do not present environmental risks”, details the deputy general manager of the port of Le Havre. Florent Weyer also highlights the character ” compact, reversible and temporary of the installation but also the absence of major danger. ” Handling liquefied gas does not create an explosion hazard “, he assures.
As for the development work, it could begin this fall after TotalEnergies and GRTgaz have obtained the necessary administrative authorizations from the State services. But be careful not to rush the procedure in the name of urgency, warns in advance the communist deputy for Seine-Maritime, Jean-Paul Lecocq, whose voice relates to Le Havre. ” If we have to put this terminal somewhere, as much as it is in Le Havre, but if Total is satisfied with the minimum service in terms of danger studies and does not inform in complete transparency, the populations will not accept it and I I will oppose the project. I warned the minister and the prefect “, he shouts. The parliamentarian also wishes to obtain guarantees that not a cubic meter of shale gas will pass through the Le Havre FSRU. On good terms.
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