German Chancellor Olaf Scholz inaugurated the liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal in the port of Lubmin on the Baltic Sea on Saturday. This terminal is intended to compensate for the stoppage of Russian gas deliveries to the first economy in the euro zone.
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“We have also ensured that the energy supply in Germany remains secure in difficult times”, argued the Chancellor as the country suffered greatly from the impact of the energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. . Dressed in a yellow safety vest, he gave the German company Deutsche ReGas the operating license for the terminal and symbolically opened a gas valve in front of the press, alongside officials from this region of northern Germany.
The terminal is used to receive and transform the gas delivered by ship in liquid form to transform it back into gas. It must be able to “cover about 5% of the demand” of the country, according to the French group TotalEnergies, which built the terminal, in partnership with Deutsche ReGas.
It is the second LNG terminal opened in Germany after the inauguration of the one in Wilhemshaven, on the North Sea, in mid-December. Gas deliveries from Russia via the Nord Stream pipeline have gradually come to a halt since the invasion of Ukraine, depriving Europeans of those gas reserves on which Germany was heavily dependent.
The Chancellor wanted to be reassuring: “prices are falling in Europe”, after the surge of recent months, he said. “It is thanks to the decisions that we took and that we prepared very early, even before the war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine,” he assured.
Construction sites carried out at the pace
TotalEnergies will also supply the terminal and thus becomes “one of the main LNG suppliers in Germany”, according to a press release. Four other floating terminals will follow in the year in Germany, after construction sites carried out at no load thanks to the billions of euros released by Berlin.
Unlike other European countries, Germany had no terminal on its soil, preferring the inexpensive resource arriving via Russian gas pipelines, on which it depended for 55% of its imports. Everything changed with the war in Ukraine and the end of deliveries by Gazprom. Imports of liquefied gas to Germany, via Belgian, Dutch and French ports, have since jumped.
These new facilities in Germany, which must avoid prohibitive transport costs, will supply a third of the country’s gas needs – removing, for the moment, the scenarios of massive shortages still mentioned a few months ago.
ATS