KARACHI: In a landmark achievement, an LNG carrier on Friday docked with floating storage and re-gasification unit (FSRU) already berthed with Pakistan's newly built LNG terminal owed by Pakistan Gas Port Consortium (PGPC) and has started the system of integration that will take 24 hours to complete. The government will be having 600 mmcfd re-gasified LNG from this terminal under the off-take guarantee under a 15-year contract at a tariff of $0.4177 per mmbtu. The tariff of 41.77 cents per mmbtu is the lowest in the region. The LNG terminal set up by Engro is charging the tariff of 66 cents per mmbtu, a top official at Petroleum Division told The News. "The country's second LNG terminal will start injecting the re-gasified LNG in the system once the integration system gets completed and in next 5-6 days the terminal will increase the re-gasification of LNG up to 600 mmcfd as in the first day, it will inject 200 mmcfd LNG in the system which will go gradually up to 600 mmcfd in 6 days' time," said an official. He said, "The will enable the gas starved Pakistan to import 1.2bcfd in the country as first LNG terminal of Engro is already importing 600 mmcfd LNG. This means after 6 days time, there will be almost an end to gas load shedding in Pakistan." Spokesman of Pakistan GasPort Consortium Fasih Ahmad said that the first LNG vessel carrying 70,000 tons LNG has berthed alongside the FSRU at the PGPC terminal at Port Qasim's LNG zone. The LNG vessel named as Golar Kevin has been supplied by Gunvor company from Nigeria. Ahmad said that the commissioning tests have immediately started and after the completion of commissioning and acceptance of tests, supply of the RLNG to the national grid wll increase up to 600 mmcfd in next few days. He said that it is a milestone achievement for Pakistan which will ensure that there is almost no gas load shedding in this winter and onwards. Equipped with modern facilities, the LNG terminal will re-gasify 600 mmcfd LNG for power plants of 3,600MW installed in Punjab helping to end power outages at the maximum. "The terminal's availability will be 96 percent in 365 days for 15 years and it will normally handle Q-flex (LNG carrier from Qatar having 215,000 tons of LNG)." The facilities the terminal has include platform with fenders to front jetty, marine loading arms designed for handling even the Q Max (LNG carrier from Qatar having 275,000 tons of LNG), firefighting system with capacity to get operational in 10 milliseconds in case of fire eruption, CCTV cameras to monitor all the activities in the terminal and electrical pullenger type SmartMoor Quick Release Hooks system make the terminal illustrious. The said LNG terminal will be having the installed capacity to handle and re-gasify the 750 mmcfd LNG. However, it will be having the live capacity of 690 mmcfd out of which the government has extended to the terminal management the off take guarantee of 600 mmcfd LNG and the remaining 90 mmcfd LNG will be provided to the private party and to this effect, the top management is in talks with various parties that include K-Electric, CNG Association (Sindh chapter) and some industrialists. He also explained while pointing towards the specific machine working on the site that this is the horizontal directional drilling facility (HDD) that has been used for laying down six meters beneath the sea bed that is 15 meters below from sea surface, over 1 kilometre pipeline from the LNG terminal site up to Fotco terminal from where it appears on the surface and goes to the tie-in site (delivery point) situated 14 kilometers away from Fotco terminal. At the delivery point, the re-gasified imported product will be made at par with the specifications of the system gas prior to injecting it to the gas network system of the country. Out of 14 kilometers pipeline, it travels four kilometers distance along with the trestle of Fotco facility.
