Start of operation until January 20th
Habeck: Two more LNG terminals at the start
1/5/2023 6:36 p.m
Things are happening in quick succession at the German liquefied gas terminals: After the inauguration of Wilhelmshaven shortly before Christmas, Economics Minister Habeck has announced that the two LNG plants in Lubmin and Brunsbüttel will go live by January 20th.
During his visit to Norway, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck announced that two more German liquefied gas terminals would be commissioned at short notice. According to a report by “Spiegel”, the plants in Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brunsbüttel in Schleswig-Holstein should go into operation by January 20th. “Lubmin will go online next week and Brunsbüttel the week after that,” the Greens politician told the magazine.
The terminal in Lubmin is operated by the medium-sized company Deutsche ReGas. The terminal still lacked the operating license from the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The terminal ship (FSRU) Neptune is already in the port, and smaller quantities of LNG have already been delivered, the report said. Brunsbüttel is operated by RWE. The terminal ship Höegh Gannet, which is currently still in the French port of Brest, is to be used there.
Three terminals replace a third of Russian imports
A few days before Christmas, Habeck and Chancellor Olaf Scholz inaugurated the first floating LNG terminal in Wilhelmshaven. There, before Christmas, the Höegh Esperanza began converting the LNG, which had been frozen to around minus 160 degrees, into gas – and now regularly feeds gas into the German grid. At the beginning of the month, the first LNG tanker from the USA arrived in Wilhelmshaven. According to Habeck, Wilhelmshaven, Lubmin and Brunsbüttel should be able to process around a third of the gas volumes previously supplied from Russia. The commissioning of three further LNG terminals on the German North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts is planned for the winter of 2023/24.
In the early afternoon in Oslo, Habeck agreed on closer cooperation between Germany and Norway on energy policy. According to this, a large-scale infrastructure for importing hydrogen to Germany should be created by 2030. Great hopes are pinned on hydrogen as an energy source for the climate-friendly restructuring of the economy.