An LNG carrier has offloaded the first volumes into one of two of New Fortress Energy’s newly installed floating storage and regasification units in Brazil.
Data provider iGIS/LNG said the 174,000-cbm Orion Sea (built 2022) delivered a cargo to the 138,000-cbm Energos Winter (built 2004) at New Fortress’ Sul Gas Terminal off Santa Catarina terminal in Brazil.
The transfer started earlier this week and is part of the commissioning phase at the new facility which has a capacity of about 6m tonnes per annum with a send-out of 500m standard cubic feet per day.
The FSRU Energos Winter arrived at the long-planned facility on 26 February and is permanently moored to a specially-built terminal linked to the shore and grids by pipeline.
The regas vessel — one of the world’s first two LNG carrier-to-FSRU conversions, which was originally deployed to Brazil in 2009 — is a relet from state energy giant Petrobras. It is due to go on long-term charter to New Fortress at the end of the relet period.
The Orion Sea loaded at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal in the US Gulf.
From data tracking, the vessel appears to have briefly called at New Fortress’ floating storage unit — the 160,000-cbm Energos Penguin (built 2014) — for its upcoming FLNG project Fast LNG off Altamira in Mexico.
This has led to speculation that the ship loaded first volumes from the FLNG unit.
But industry observers watching the start-up of the jack-up rig-based units said the Orion Sea arrived fully loaded and they do not yet see evidence that New Fortress’ first offshore liquefaction project may be ready to offload a first cargo.
Instead, they suggested that the visiting LNG carrier was being used to check mooring arrangements at the FSU or that the vessel discharged some commissioning volumes for the unit.
New Fortress stated in its results presentation that it is targeting a first cargo from the FLNG unit in April.
