Ukraine (bbabo.net), - This week, the German chancellor will go on a tour of the Middle East, where he will negotiate oil and gas supplies. It is expected that Olaf Scholz will participate in the signing of contracts for the supply of LNG from the UAE. Coincidentally, an LNG tanker intercepted by the German government from Gazprom is already on its way to Europe, having loaded at an LNG terminal in a Middle Eastern country.
On September 24-25, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. According to the press secretary of the German government, Steffen Hebestreit, the head of the German government will hold talks on cooperation in the field of innovation, information technology and energy.
“On Saturday (September 24) the chancellor will leave for Saudi Arabia. There he will meet with the Saudi king and crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. On Sunday (September 25), the chancellor will meet with President of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed bin Zayed. And in the afternoon, he will meet with Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Qatar for negotiations,” said a government spokesman.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, in turn, visited the construction site of the LNG terminal in Lublin and announced that in the Chancellor would participate in signing contracts for the supply of LNG.
"German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to sign contracts for liquefied natural gas during his visit to the United Arab Emirates on Sunday," the minister said, according to Reuters.
Obviously, the visit will be much more successful than the tour of Robert Habek in the spring, when he was unable to bring a single new contract for the supply of oil and gas. It is quite possible that the first LNG cargo from the UAE for Germany is already on its way to the EU.
Coincidentally, the Ob River tanker is heading towards Europe. According to Vesselfinder, on September 17, the gas carrier completed loading LNG at the UAE terminal on Das Island in the Persian Gulf, has already entered the Indian Ocean and indicates that it is heading to the Atlantic. Traditionally, this is the way to indicate the transit point of ships heading to North-Western Europe.
It is noteworthy that the Dynagas Ob River tanker was chartered by Gazprom through Gazprom Marketing and Trading (GMT) for the export of LNG from the Sakhalin-2 project until 2026. However, in April it came under the control of the German government, which nationalized Gazprom Germania and all of its divisions, including GMT.
“Three old charters for Clean Energy, Ob River and Amur River are now under German control outside of Russia. The changes did not affect our earnings,” Dynagas LNG Partners chief executive Tony Lauritzen said at the June first-quarter results call.
In the summer, Ob River went to the Philippines for repairs and is now making its first flight after maintenance work. At the same time, the remaining two tankers also no longer serve Sakhalin-2 and over the past few months have made several exports of LNG from the terminal on Das Island to Asian countries. It is quite possible that the German government will try to use the gas carriers chartered by Gazprom for the needs of its country's companies.
Until LNG terminals are introduced in Germany, LNG carriers can unload, for example, in the Netherlands or the UK, where Uniper and Gazprom Germania (now Safe Energy for Europe, SEFE) have booked capacity.
As reported by the Federal Network Agency of Germany, two LNG terminals in the country's ports in the North and Baltic Seas should start operating in January. Their total capacity will be 13.5 billion cubic meters per year. However, only one new contract is known so far, which will help to load new terminals. In early September, the German Uniper signed a long-term agreement through its trading arm Uniper Global Commodities SE with Australia's Woodside to supply additional LNG from January 2023 for 15 years. Every year, an importer from Germany can count on an additional 12 cargoes with a total volume of 800,000 tons (1 billion cubic meters).
German companies also have other existing contracts for the supply of LNG from Australia and the United States, however, as Aleksey Grivach, deputy director of the FNEB, noted to bbabo.net, all agreements, except for one, are limited to a clear delivery point.
The German regulator said in its forecast that with a complete halt in Russian gas supplies to Germany, it is necessary to reduce consumption by at least 20% and look for additional sources of supplies, in addition to two new LNG terminals.
bbabo.Net