The first LNG cargo arrived on 1 January 2021, marking the start of the commercial operation of the terminal. The first cargo was intended for Hungarian companies. LNG carrier Patris has arrived at Croatia’s Krk terminal bringing 90 million cubic meters of LNG shipment from the United States to Hungary.
In early March, the terminal received its second shipment, this time for state-owned power utility HEP. The third cargo, and the second one to be shipped to Hungary, arrived from the Freeport LNG export terminal in Texas.
The floating LNG terminal accepts LNG from ships and after its regasification, gas is transported via the pipeline system to end-buyers. The terminal consists of the LNG Croatia ship, a Floating Storage & Regasification Unit (FSRU), a jetty with auxiliary facilities, and a connection pipeline leading to the new Omisalj-Zlobin gas pipeline which connects the terminal with Croatia’s gas network. The LNG Croatia ship has a capacity of 140,000 cubic meters and a regasification capacity of 300,000 cubic meters per hour, which means an annual capacity of 2.6 billion cubic meters of gas.
Last June, The operator of the terminal LNG Hrvatska said that all the remaining available capacities for the next three gas years have been booked under the 15-year agreement with PowerGlobe Qatar. The company booked capacities of 0.468 billion cubic meters in each of the next 5 gas years until the end of 2024/2025 gas year, capacities of 0.624 billion cubic meters in each of the following 5 gas seasons until the end of 2029/2030, and capacities of 0.936 billion cubic meters in each of the subsequent five years until the end of 2034/2035. Following capacity booking by PowerGlobe, the overall booked capacity at the future LNG terminal has reached 1.878 billion cubic meters for 2020/2021 gas year, 2.54 billion cubic meters for 2021/2022 and 2022/2023, 2 billion cubic meters for 2023/2024 and 2024/2025, 2.157 billion cubic meters for 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 and 1.143 billion cubic meters for the following three gas years. LNG Hrvatska announced earlier that MFGK Croatia, local company owned by Hungarian Electricity Works (MVM), has leased 6.75 billion cubic meters of capacity of the future LNG terminal. In the gas year 2020/2021, MFGK Croatia leased a capacity of 666 million cubic meters and 1.014 billion cubic meters of annual capacity in the following six years. INA and HEP previously leased slightly more than 0.5 billion cubic meters, while MET Croatia Energy Trade leased 0.5 billion cubic meters of capacity for three years. Since the entire capacity of the terminal has been leased, the need to collect the so-called SOS fee, namely the fee for security of supply, which in the case of a lease of less than 1.1 billion cubic meters per year would be paid by all gas consumers in Croatia, was definitely eliminated.
