Skip to main content

Germany opens LNG terminal.

LNG station

 Germany has opened its floating liquefied natural gas terminal in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven, marking a crucial milestone in its quest for energy independence from Russia. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, inaugurated the Höegh Esperanza floating storage and regasification unit, one of five that the German government has contracted to fill the energy gap formed after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The Esperanza, a specialised ship the length of nearly three football fields, is carrying 170mn cubic metres of LNG, much of it from the US, enough to supply 50,000 households with gas for a year. Over the coming weeks, it will be reconverted to gas and fed into Germany’s onshore pipeline network. Moscow’s decision to drastically reduce gas exports to Germany during the summer plunged Europe’s largest economy into its worst energy crisis since the second world war.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia accounted for more than half of Germany’s gas imports. However, Berlin’s efforts to find a substitute were impeded by its lack of LNG import infrastructure and its near total reliance on pipelines such as Nord Stream 1 that brought gas directly from Russia. «Russia’s President Putin thought he could blackmail us by switching off the gas supply,» Scholz said. «He was wrong.» The chancellor added that Germany would soon have an LNG import capacity of 30bn cubic metres a year on its northern coasts.

The infrastructure for the Wilhelm-shaven FSRU was built in 10 months, a record for a country where big energy projects tend to take years to complete. The Esperanza will be supplemented by a second FSRU, the Höegh Gannet, which will operate in the nearby port of Brunsbüttel in January. «This is a milestone for Germany becoming energy independent,» Erik Nyheim, chief executive of Höegh LNG, which owns the Esperanza, Gannet and Neptune, told the Financial Times. Nyheim said the Höegh Esperanza, Gannet and Neptune would have a combined regasification capacity of 17.5bn cubic metres a year, representing «a significant contribution» to Germany’s energy supply.

«We are threatened with massive overcapacity and lock-in effects, although gas consumption in Germany has to fall dramatically in the coming years,» said Sascha Müller-Kraenner, head of German Environmental Aid. « That’s why Germany needs the terminals».

www.sba.tax

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...
4 comments
Read more

Small business will be excluded from fraud law.

  Min­is­ters are plan­ning to exclude small busi­nesses from anti-fraud legis­la­tion by nar­row­ing the scope of a crim­inal offence tar­get­ing com­pan­ies that fail to pre­vent eco­nomic crimes. MPs and anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­ers had hoped the gov­ern­ment would seek to amend the eco­nomic crime and cor­por­ate trans­par­ency bill to ensure the new offence covered all com­pan­ies. The plans to limit the scope of the amend­ments will also dis­ap­point those who had hoped the legis­la­tion would remove key hurdles to the pro­sec­u­tion of white-col­lar crime. A new «fail­ure to pre­vent» offence for fraud would bring it in line with exist­ing sim­ilar cor­por­ate offences for bribery and tax eva­sion. At present, pro­sec­utors need only prove that organ­isa­tions lacked «reas­on­able» or «adequate» con­trols to pur­sue the offence in bribery and tax eva­sion cases. «It would be much more sens­ible for the gov­ern­ment to provide strong guid­ance for SMEs on what these pro­ce...
3 comments
Read more

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...
2 comments
Read more