British power and gas utility National Grid said it aims to sell its Grain liquefied natural gas facility, Europe’s largest LNG import terminal.
National Grid revealed the sale plans in its 2023/24 results report issued on Thursday.
The company said it is further evolving its strategy to focus on networks and plans to sell Grain LNG in the UK, and National Grid Renewables, its US onshore renewables business.
According to National Grid’s website, the total investment in the Isle of Grain LNG facility reached more than $1.1 billion up to date.
Launched in 2005, the LNG terminal currently has 8 LNG storage tanks able to store 1,000,000 cbm.
The facility has two jetties and a total capacity of about 15 mtpa.
Also, National Grid is expanding the facility and it is building a new 190,000-cbm storage LNG tank.
The firm previously said it expects to complete construction in summer 2025, increasing Grain LNG’s capacity to 1.2 bcm, equal to 33 percent of UK gas demand.
In February this year, National Grid revealed two Grain LNG capacity agreements with Algeria’s LNG producer Sonatrach and US LNG exporter Venture Global lng.
Under the binding terminal use agreement with Venture Global, the firm will have the ability to access 3 mtpa of LNG storage and regasification capacity at the Grain LNG terminal for 16 years beginning in 2029.
The deal will enable the regasification and sale of LNG from all of Venture Global’s LNG terminals in Louisiana, including CP2 LNG.
Prior to this agreement, Grain LNG signed a ten-year deal with Sonatrach that will extend the latter’s storage and redelivery capacity at the LNG import terminal from January 2029.
This is the first agreement for 125GWh/d of import capacity, equivalent to 3 mtpa of LNG, from Grain LNG’s competitive auction process which was launched in September 2023 for about 9 mtpa of existing capacity.
National Grid’s first customers, BP/Sonatrach, were awarded a 20-year contract for 3.3 mtpa of LNG throughput capacity per year.
With the increase in capacity to 14.8 mtpa, additional contracts were awarded, again on a long-term basis, to Centrica, GDF Suez (now TotalEnergies) and Sonatrach, from December 2008 and to E.ON, Iberdrola and Centrica from December 2010.
Iberdrola sold its capacity to Pavilion Energy effective from January 2020.
Back in 2020, QatarEnergy also booked capacity from 2025 as part of the expansion of the Grain terminal.
