Croatia: Government to speed up LNG terminal project

Published on 31. July 2017., SEE Energy News

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said after the Government session on Thursday that everything is being done to speed up the implementation of the project for the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Krk island.

The discussion on the financial aspects of the project was on the agenda of the closed session and the details were not disclosed to public. However, at the following press conference PM Plenkovic said that the Government is working on the prerequisites to accelerate the realization of this project, which is important not only to strengthen the position of Croatian on the European energy map, but also for other countries of Central Europe, reminding that Croatia received funding from the European Commission for the implementation of this project.

In May, Director of LNG Hrvatska Goran Francic said at the international gas conference in Opatija that the investment decision on the floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Krk island will be made in the first quarter of 2018, and the first quantities of gas from the terminal should be available by early 2020.

Francic said that the next step in the process was the drafting of technical documentation, the conceptual and main project, and the drafting of the environmental impact study, in order to obtain location and building permits. He noted that it was important to continue with the “open season” for the lease of the terminal capacity, since the leasing companies wants to know the final gas price, adding that the market will decide whether LNG would be competitive.

The grant approved by the EU through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) fund in February 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 should cover 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.