Photo: Dutch Gate terminal in first-ever Yamal LNG transshipment

The Gate terminal in the Dutch port of Rotterdam said it had performed the first-ever transshipment of a cargo sourced from the Novatek-operated Yamal LNG project in the Russian Arctic.

The three-train Yamal LNG plant, designed to produce about 16.5 million tonnes per year, started liquefying and shipping the fuel in December. It is Russia’s second LNG export facility.

The Yamal plant exported its first two cargoes later in the month onboard the ice-class tankers Christophe de Margerie and Boris Vilkitsky.

As previously reported, the 172,600-cbm Christophe de Margerie delivered the first Yamal cargo to the UK’s Grain terminal last week. This cargo is being stored in one of Grain LNG’s tanks and it is reportedly expected to be re-exported to a higher paying market instead of being pumped into the domestic grid.

On the other side, despite several media reports saying that the cargo Boris Vilkitsky brought to Gate had been re-exported to Spain, these volumes did not enter the terminal’s tanks.

Instead, these volumes were transferred to another ship via a transshipment operation, Stefaan Adriaens, Commercial Manager at the Dutch Gate terminal told LNG World News on Wednesday.

“The operation was a transshipment so not an unload followed by a load as Grain is doing,” Adriaens said.

The volumes were transferred to the 162,000-cbm LNG tanker Clean Ocean, as shown in the image above.

According to the vessel tracking data by the marine data provider, VesselsValue, the Clean Ocean was on Wednesday located offshore Ferrol in the province of A Coruña, located on the Atlantic coast in north-western Spain.

The ice-class tankers carrying volumes from Yamal LNG will regularly transfer cargoes at north-west European terminals during winter, where conventional vessels can pick them up for delivery to Asia or other higher-paying markets.

Yamal LNG and Belgium’s Fluxys LNG previously signed a 20-year contract for transshipment of up to 8 million mt of LNG per year at the port of Zeebrugge to support year-round LNG deliveries from the Yamal Peninsula to Asian-Pacific markets.

During Arctic summer, Yamal LNG will be delivering the chilled fuel to Asian-Pacific markets via the Northern Sea Route.

LNG World News Staff