First gas load to Alexandroupoli FSRU
Two months after it was moored in the Thracian Sea, the floating natural gas storage and regasification unit (FSRU), named Alexandroupolis, will on Friday receive its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo.
The American-origin LNG will be used for the trial operation of the FSRU, while the quantities that will be left over, according to what sources of the managing company Gastrade tell Kathimerini, will be available to users who have reserved capacity at the station’s facilities – and there are more than 13 companies that are active in the wider region, Greek and foreign.
The start of the commercial operation of the new gas infrastructure will also depend on the duration of the trial operation, which, due to its purely export orientation, strengthens the role of Greece as a gateway for supplying the markets of the wider region, independent of Russian gas.
Some 60-70% of the gas to be gasified at the floating LNG terminal is estimated to be exported via the IGB pipeline interconnector and the Sidirokastro station in reverse flow to Bulgaria and from there via existing interconnectors to Serbia, North Macedonia, Romania, and to Moldova and Ukraine and west to Hungary and Slovakia, a market of over 65 billion cubic meters of gas per year (about as much as the consumption of Germany).
