The start-up of the Gijón regasification plant, built ten years ago and unused until now, is scheduled for the summer. Enagás does not plan to award the capacity allocation of the El Musel facility until next Julyfour months after opening the period for submitting offers by marketers or “brokers” interested in using the 170,000 m3 of capacity that it put on the market on March 6 (56% of the 300,000 m3 that can accommodate the two liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanks of the regasification company.The July date was announced yesterday by the person in charge of the Enagás plant, Raul Jimenez Calvoduring his speech at the conference “Energy a key element in the development of the territory”, a conference organized by Compromiso Asturias XXI yesterday at the Trade Fair in Gijón.
On March 2, Enagás executives made a presentation to regulatory authorities, gas operators and “brokers” of the “open season” that Enagás opened four days later to sell part of the storage capacity of the El Musel plant for logistics operations in which the plant in Gijón will be an intermediate storage point for LNG, whose final destination will be other European countries. The non-binding phase of the “open season” has already concludednow having to submit binding offers interested companies.
The reason for excluding 130,000 m3 of the capacity offer for logistics use is that this part will be used to supply the national market, by means of tanker trucks and regasifying the minimum essential quantity necessary for technical reasons, to evacuate the so-called “boil off”, the gas that evaporates spontaneously in the tanks where it is stored liquefied at 160 degrees below zero.
Raúl Jiménez explained that in the short term “the El Musel plant will contribute a grain of sand to the guarantee of supply” to Europe and Spainserving as “strategic storage in the EU and as a buffer for all these floating regasification units that have arrived mainly in Germany and Central Europe for non-dependence on Russian gas.”
In the long term, the goal is to gradually convert the plant into a “multimolecule logistics hub, in which we are not only dedicated to liquefied natural gas, but also to green hydrogen, liquid hydrogen, bio LNG, biomethane and ammonia.”
On February 2, the CNMC authorized a singular remuneration regime for the El Musel plant so that it operates mainly as a logistics warehouse until 2026. Subsequently, Enagás reached an agreement with Reganosa (owner of the Galician Mugardos regasification company), through which the latter acquired 25% of the El Musel plant. In addition to the reinforcement by incorporating a new partner for the Gijón project, Enagás avoided the risk that de Reganosa would legally challenge the administrative authorization of the Gijón plant, against which it had filed allegations.
The person who has challenged the administrative authorization and approval of the Gijón plant project, which was agreed by the Ministry for Ecological Transition on June 28, has been Ecologistas en Acción, as announced at the conference by its spokesperson in Asturias, Paco Ramos. The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) decreed on March 15 the admission for processing of the contentious appeal. The plant in Gijón will thus again be involved in a legal conflict after a ruling by that same court annulled, in 2013 at the request of Equo, the first administrative authorization for the plant, forcing the entire process to be repeated.