Five planned LNG terminals in Italy move forward

June 23, 2008
Italy's privately-held Anonima Petroli Italiana SPA, Rome, applied for approval from the country's Environment Ministry for an offshore regasification terminal with an capacity of about 4 billion cu m/year.

Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent

LOS ANGELES, June 23 -- Italy's privately-held Anonima Petroli Italiana SPA, Rome, applied for approval from the country's Environment Ministry for an offshore regasification terminal with an capacity of about 4 billion cu m/year.

The facility will be located in the Adriatic Sea in front of Anonima Petroli's Falconara refinery. After converting the LNG, the company will inject the gas into Snam Rete Gas SPA's grid. Construction will take just over 5 months.

The news coincided with reports that Gas Natural could win environmental clearance for an 8 billion cu m regasification terminal it wants to develop at Trieste in northern Italy. An official at the environment ministry confirmed that Gas Natural's LNG facility had received positive opinions from a series of subcommittees at the ministry, and it said the project could be approved or a series of observations on the plans could be made.

Earlier this month, Iride SPA and CIR SPA's unit Sorgenia SPA said their planned 12 billion cu m regasification terminal at Gioia Tauro, which won environmental approval in April, has been granted access to European Union funding. The Gioia Tauro terminal is due to go online in 2013.

In early May, Royal Dutch Shell and Italy's ERG received local authorization to build their planned joint Ionio LNG import terminal in Sicily. The partners hope to begin construction of the import terminal in 2010 and to have it operational by 2013, according to ERG's power and gas division head Raffaele Tognacca.

Later in May, following a feasibility study completed early this year on its Triton LNG project 30 km off Italy's Marches region in the Adriatic Sea, Gaz de France signed a joint development agreement with Oslo-based Hoegh LNG for the design, construction, and operation of a floating storage and regasification unit vessel (OGJ Online, May 30, 2008).

Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].