Eemshaven LNG - Repurposing an FSRU Built for Tropical Conditions to Operate in the North Sea
Conference/JournalOffshore Technology Conference (OTC), Houston, USA
Date1 May 2023
In 2017, Exmar has taken delivery of an FSRU which was intended to operate in Bangladesh to provide the country up to 600 MMSCFD of natural gas. The FSRU was purpose-built with a shallow draft to allow it to be moored in a river estuary. The project in Bangladesh never materialized and the FSRU ended up in lay-up in Singapore.
With the energy crisis unfolding early 2022 several countries in Europe urgently started investigating the possibilities to bring FSRUs to Europe to ensure the security of natural gas supplies and in order to have a back-up for the decreasing natural gas flow from Russia. It was proposed to mobilize our FSRU from Singapore and eventually a 5-year contract with Gasunie was signed. This deal made it possible to operate the FSRU at the EemsEnergy Terminal in The Netherlands.
For the FSRU to operate safely and efficiently at the new terminal, several modifications needed to be applied in order to adapt the FSRU to the new, colder environment. First and foremost, the regasification system needed to be provided with warm heating water. As per the original design, the FSRU regasification system needs seawater of at least 15 °C in order to avoid freezing in the LNG vaporizers. A closed loop heating water system was not foreseen for heating the water which is used to vaporize the LNG. Several options have been investigated and together with the Client, it was decided to use heat from shore as input for vaporizing the LNG.
The FSRU layout was also found incompatible with terminal layout and changes were required on the main piping system and on the mooring system. Within a couple of months time the mooring design was revisited, the main piping layout was modified to ensure the FSRU could fit the terminal and could stay safely moored in the new metocean environment. After the FSRU was mobilized from Singapore it went straight into the conversion yard in the Netherlands.
Within a period of 2 months all changes were implemented and the FSRU could be deployed on time to supply LNG to The Netherlands.This project demonstrates that our FSRU concept is flexible and can be redeployed quickly to other sites when market conditions change. Thanks to our in-house engineering and operational capabilities, we could upgrade the FSRU design in a short time, matching the very demanding project timeline.
This paper is copyrighted material and cannot be shared. Due to copyright policy MARIN is not allowed to reproduce and distribute papers written for and presented at the OTC (Offshore Technology Conference), ISOPE (International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference) and SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). You can order these papers through www.OnePetro.org.
For this specific paper follow this link.
With the energy crisis unfolding early 2022 several countries in Europe urgently started investigating the possibilities to bring FSRUs to Europe to ensure the security of natural gas supplies and in order to have a back-up for the decreasing natural gas flow from Russia. It was proposed to mobilize our FSRU from Singapore and eventually a 5-year contract with Gasunie was signed. This deal made it possible to operate the FSRU at the EemsEnergy Terminal in The Netherlands.
For the FSRU to operate safely and efficiently at the new terminal, several modifications needed to be applied in order to adapt the FSRU to the new, colder environment. First and foremost, the regasification system needed to be provided with warm heating water. As per the original design, the FSRU regasification system needs seawater of at least 15 °C in order to avoid freezing in the LNG vaporizers. A closed loop heating water system was not foreseen for heating the water which is used to vaporize the LNG. Several options have been investigated and together with the Client, it was decided to use heat from shore as input for vaporizing the LNG.
The FSRU layout was also found incompatible with terminal layout and changes were required on the main piping system and on the mooring system. Within a couple of months time the mooring design was revisited, the main piping layout was modified to ensure the FSRU could fit the terminal and could stay safely moored in the new metocean environment. After the FSRU was mobilized from Singapore it went straight into the conversion yard in the Netherlands.
Within a period of 2 months all changes were implemented and the FSRU could be deployed on time to supply LNG to The Netherlands.This project demonstrates that our FSRU concept is flexible and can be redeployed quickly to other sites when market conditions change. Thanks to our in-house engineering and operational capabilities, we could upgrade the FSRU design in a short time, matching the very demanding project timeline.
This paper is copyrighted material and cannot be shared. Due to copyright policy MARIN is not allowed to reproduce and distribute papers written for and presented at the OTC (Offshore Technology Conference), ISOPE (International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference) and SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). You can order these papers through www.OnePetro.org.
For this specific paper follow this link.
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