During her visit to Qatar, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who previously expressed interest in supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) to future Croatian terminal on Krk island, and stressed that important European energy routes will bypass Croatia if it does not start the construction of the terminal soon.
Grabar-Kitarovic said that the construction of LNG terminal on Krk island has been discussed for years, but not much was actually done. Procurement of the floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) has not even started yet, although, according to previous Government’s announcements, it should be put into operation by the end of 2019. She said that Croatia started considering the construction of LNG terminal at the same time as Poland, but Polish terminal was commissioned over a year ago. Qatar is still interested in supplying PNG to Croatia, but expects concrete decisions by the Croatian Government regarding the future of this project, Grabar-Kitarovic concluded.
Currently, Croatian LNG terminal project is in the stage of seeking for the strategic partners and it is expected that the floating LNG terminal should be completed by the end of 2019. The total value of the project is 363 million euros. The grant approved by the EU through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) fund provides 747,000 euros for the development of the feasibility study, which covers half the price, and 101.4 million euros for the construction of LNG terminal, which covers some 28 % of the total price. Instead of the original plan to build land terminal with the capacity of 6 billion cubic meters of gas per year, Croatia opted for an intermediate solution with the floating terminal with the annual capacity between 1.5 and 2 billion cubic meters, which could be operational in year and a half or two, because only minor procedures to the gas transportation system is needed due to its smaller capacity and could be leased for about 50 million euros per year.
