Finland opens floating liquified natural gas terminal to replace Russian supply

Like many countries in Europe, Finland is looking to liquified natural gas (LNG), to replace the mainly pipeline-transported gas it used to receive from Russia.

The Nordic country's first floating liquefied natural gas terminal was moored on Wednesday at the southern port of Inkoo. The massive 291-metre-long and 43-metre-wide offshore support vessel Exemplar, which sailed to the Baltic Sea from Gibraltar earlier in December, has a capacity of 68,000 tons of LNG. It is scheduled to be in operation from next year. FSRU Exemplar, owned by the US company Excelerate Energy Inc., will ensure the future availability of gas in Finland. It will replace supplies previously imported from Russia, the state-owned Gasgrid Finland said, calling the move "historic". “Finland will permanently phase out its dependency on Russian gas and will greatly improve society’s security of supply,” Gasgrid Finland CEO Olli Sipilä said. The aim is that the terminal’s customers will begin to distribute gas to meet the needs of Finnish industry, energy production, and households from mid-January 2023 onwards.” The vessel will reconvert LNG to gas which will then be fed into the Finnish network for distribution. The arrival of the Exemplar will also enable gas deliveries to the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — and possibly also to Poland through the undersea Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia that runs near Inkoo. (Source Euronews)