Gasum delivers 2nd LNG cargo after gas pipeline damage

Nordic energy company Gasum started to deliver a cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the Inkoo floating storage regasification unit (FSRU), said Gasum in a press release on Monday.

The cargo arrived on Sunday and unloading has been started. At the FSRU the LNG is regasified and fed into the Finnish gas pipeline grid.

This is the second LNG cargo Gasum has delivered to the Inkoo FRSU since the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia suffered a rupture and was shut down in early October.

Repair of the pipeline is expected to take at least five months. In the meantime, all Finnish natural gas demand must be met through imports of LNG.

“We are working hard to secure supply of natural gas over the coming winter season to our customers, whose operations depend on a steady supply of gas. It is a challenging situation, but we already have experience from rebuilding our pipeline natural gas supply chain after natural gas imports from Russia were suspended in 2022”, said Jouni Liimatta, Head of Trading and Optimizing at Gasum.

The LNG cargo is approximately 400 GWh in size, it was supplied by Gasum’s longtime partner Equinor and comes from Norway.

Equinor is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company with a presence in 30 countries around the world.

In addition to this delivery, Gasum has reserved three more slots at the Inkoo FSRU for the upcoming winter season.

These cargoes will ensure that Gasum can meet the natural gas demand of its customers until spring 2024. In the coming months the Inkoo FSRU will also be equipped with the technical capability to load LNG from the terminal further into smaller bunkering vessels, improving the flexibility of cargo utilization.

The natural gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was temporarily closed following a suspected leak on October 8.

On October 10, the authority said that the damage to the Baltic Connector gas pipeline and a data cable between Finland and Estonia was likely caused by an external actor, not caused by the normal gas transmission process.

Finland and Estonia are jointly investigating into the damage to the Baltic Connector gas pipeline and a data cable between the two countries.

The repairing works of the Baltic Connector gas pipeline will take at least five months.

On October 20, the National Bureau of Investigation announced that it will examine if the object found in the seabed has any connection to the damage of the undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia.

Earlier on October 24, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said that a Hong Kong flag carrier vessel Newnew Polar Bear of a Chinese shipping company is believed to have caused the damage to the Balticconnector,