Faith uses cold air to keep warm through winter

WILHELMSHAVEN, Germany – When a big energy company want to bring liquefied natural gas arrived in Germany via the port of Wilhelmshaven in the North Sea three years ago, the proposal hit a brick wall. The company couldn’t find enough customers, the government offered only a trickle of support, and residents denounced the plan as a threat to the local apple orchard.

“Apple juice, not LNG,” say protesters. The company, Uniper, has shelved its plans.

Now, steel pipes are being rammed into the seabed in preparation for the arrival of a nearly thousand-foot LNG processing vessel, the Höegh Esperanza. Nearby, construction crews on bulldozers are digging along the perimeter of a forest to clear the way for a new 20-mile pipeline that connects to the German gas grid.

Uniper said it expects gas to start arriving here before the end of winter as demand for heating homes soars.

Germany is in a race to bring in more natural gas from new sources as Russia slowly cuts the amount of fuel it supplies to Europe’s largest economy, a punishment for its opposition to the war. invade Ukraine. On Wednesday, Russia cut flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline connecting the two countries to a fifth of capacity, the latest cut since the country began restricting deliveries in June. The stakes are escalating as officials in Berlin brace for potential gas deliveries and an economic downturn if deliveries are ultimately cut.

LNG is the most readily available fuel to make up for the shortfall. Long considered an expensive alternative to reliable pipeline flows from Siberia, LNG almost overnight became the answer to Germany’s overreliance on a single supplier. and hope to stay warm through the winter.

When Berlin called on companies to help increase energy supplies, all his company had to do was pull the plan out of the drawer, said Holger Kreetz, Uniper’s CEO of wealth management.

“This is an important project that will help us get through this crisis,” Kreetz said. “It also highlights what can happen when the political will is there.”

Minister of Energy from The European Union agreed on Tuesday calls on all 27 member states to voluntarily cut natural gas consumption by 15% until spring. Germany is targeting deeper cuts, and has set aside 2.5 billion euros ($2.55 billion) to charter four LNG processing vessels, including one for Wilhelmshaven.

The urgency to push projects forward is unusual in a country known for government deliberation and scrutiny. But Germany’s reliance on imported energy leaves Berlin with little choice if it hopes to keep its economy afloat. The move is complicated by Berlin’s rush to buy Uniper, a company it has just agreed to underwrite because it is struggling amid the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war.

In an interview at a fish restaurant overlooking the harbor in Wilhelmshaven, Mr Kreetz said he had never done business this way, but that it was due to the energy crisis so it was “right” to compress the plan. and financial analysis. energy projects. “Otherwise, it will take you a lot of time that we need to build,” he said.

Wilhelmshaven, home to tourism and birdwatching along with a container port and naval base, is premise and central to Germany’s plan to replace Russian natural gas.

Unlike the rest of Europe, which boasts about two dozen terminals that receive liquefied natural gas, Germany has resisted building LNG facilities for decades, arguing that chilled natural gas Coming by train is too expensive. After all, the thinking has gone, ample gas is available via pipelines from Russia, and if necessary, Germany can always attract terminals in neighboring countries such as the Netherlands and France, which previously when invasion has not been used.

Since Russia began cutting gas supplies to Europe, cutting or cutting flows to the 12 members of the European Union – Germany has decided it needs its own floating fleet. These installations are essentially ships with equipment to take cooled liquefied gas from ocean-going tankers, warm it back into steam, and transfer it to shore.

Recent approvals for other north-west ports, in Brunsbüttel and Stade, have created a competition for which supplier can have the first terminal up and running before winter ends. Wilhelmshaven, with its deep harbor and direct access to the sea, is headed for victory and may end up with more than one.

Local officials and businesses in Wilhelmshaven hope that success in importing LNG could facilitate the port to become a hub for hydrogen transport, which can have a bright future as a fuel for the sake of the Union. Europe is promoting it as a greener alternative to natural gas to meet climate change goals.

The pressure on energy supply “is not only our biggest challenge but also our biggest opportunity,” said Mathias Lüdicke, branch manager of Nuremberg Ports, which is preparing the pier.

For now, however, the focus is on liquefied natural gas. Its big advantage is that it can be transported across the oceans on board ships – cooled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, natural gas reduced to a liquid that takes up only one percent of its volume as a gas – from major manufacturers such as the United States and Qatar.

When all four LNG receiving stations come online, they could go a long way toward making up for lost Russian supplies.

“No one would have thought that things could happen so quickly,” said Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president of global gas at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

But securing all those gas carriers could be more difficult than building new terminals, Di Odoardo said. Previously, most of the chilled fuel was shipped to Asia, where China, Japan and South Korea were the main customers. But in the first half of this year, LNG shipments to Europe were up about 50% from a year earlier, Di Odoardo said.

Supply surged from the United States, which in the first half of the year became the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, according to US Energy Information Administrationwith nearly two-thirds of their exports as of May going to the European Union and the UK.

Maintaining or increasing that level of imports will not be easy. New supply is limited and European buyers will most likely need to outbid Asian buyers. The German government, which has seen the switch to LNG as a temporary solution before switching to fuels like hydrogen, will also need to decide whether to commit to 20-year contracts that will lock in new LNG supplies. are not. Such long-term commitments are a stumbling block in the aborted effort to build a station by 2019.

“When manufacturers negotiate with us, they want long-term contracts,” Kreetz said. “Clearly, this is something the government needs to address.”

The German government has become an important broker and financier of LNG because of the potentially disastrous consequences of gas shortages on the economy. Uniper, Germany’s largest gas importer from Russia, can no longer afford to play such a role. The Düsseldorf-based company has suffered profound financial losses due to the Russian cuts. Last week, the government intervened take 30 percent shares in company.

Environmentalists, who have argued against the use of natural gas because it is a fossil fuel that puts greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, have been forced to accept the fact that it is against the plans. government will not be common in the current situation.

“We are trying to make the best of the worst,” said Stefanie Eilers, head of the local chapter of NABU, a prominent conservation group in Germany. The group has been fighting to preserve Wilhelmshaven’s lush wetlands, home to birds of prey and swallows, and to attract migrating cranes, geese and ducks.

Olaf Lies, a local native who is the energy minister for the state of Lower Saxony, which includes the port, says their efforts are becoming more muted than they were three years ago. At the time, he recalls, there were many protests over concerns that pipelines planned to connect to the LNG facilities would destroy an apple orchard that had existed for many years.

“That’s more or less how the project looks,” Lies said, adding that he and other officials now feel the need to get rid of Russian gas quickly. “Today, we realize that our reckless attitude prevents us from making decisions that leave us in a position of dependence.”