Hoegh LNG has been granted final approvals to go ahead with its Port Meridian Deepwater Port project in UK. On June 15, 2009 the Department of Energy & Climate Change (Offshore Environment and Decommissioning, OED) confirmed that a favorable environmental impact assessment approval decision is given for the offshore part of the project.
Barrow Borrow Council’s planning meeting consented to the development of the pipeline route, onshore facilities and access on the May 19, 2009 which means that all main permits have been granted.
“This successfully completes more than 3 years of development work on the project, and confirms Hoegh LNG’s strategy to design and develop a new competitive LNG market access into the UK natural gas market”, says Sveinung J. Stohle, chief executive officer of Hoegh LNG. “This is one of several projects of similar kind we have in our portfolio, and we are very pleased with the support the UK regulatory authorities have afforded us in this development. We are now focusing on the commercial part of the project, and are currently discussing with several major companies for the capacity at the terminal. Port Meridian will offer our customers new LNG import capacity and thus the possibility for marketers to diversify their sources and increase the security of supply to their consumers in UK, while LNG owners are offered an alternative and flexible solution for access to the attractive UK natural gas market.”
Port Meridian base design is for a floating re-gasification units (FSRU), but the with added flexibility of two unloading buoys, a large diameter subsea pipeline and onshore facilities connecting the system to the UK National Transmissions system (NTS). The annual import capacity of the project could be up to 8 billion cubic meters, which would represent between 5% and 10% of the UK annual consumption of natural gas. The onshore installations include the pipeline landfall on Walney Island, the crossing of Walney Island and Piel Channel to connect to the above ground installations (AGI) close to Barrow-in-Furness on the mainland. The primary purpose of the AGI is to ensure that the imported gas is of suitable delivery condition for the (NTS).