There doesn’t seem to be much interest for Croatia’s future LNG terminal.
LNG Croatia has again extended the deadline for closing the tender for the second binding round of capacity lease. The new deadline is December 20, and it was postponed after such request was received from interested users, reports tportal.hr on September 28, 2018.
The second round of the binding phase of the lease procedure was opened on June 22, and the initial deadline for the submission of bids was August 3. At that time, the deadline was extended until September 28, and now until December 20.
“Since LNG Croatia has received requests from interested terminal users for an additional extension of the bidding deadline, LNG Croatia co-ordinated with Plinacro and FGSZ companies and agreed on a new term plan for implementing the next part of the binding phase. The aim is to achieve a positive completion of the binding phase of the tender,” announced the company on its website.
It added that the new time schedule for the implementation of the binding phase, together with new deadlines for each activity, will be submitted to all registered businesses participating in the procedure.
LNG Croatia is undertaking the binding phase of the tender for leasing the capacity of the future terminal on the island of Krk. while a separate process is being carried out by Plinacro and FGSZ. They are the transport system operators in Croatia and Hungary, and their tender is for contracting the capacity of the gas transportation system.
In the non-binding phase of the tender, 20 companies expressed initial interest, and 12 companies submitted bids in the total amount higher than the initial capacity of 2.6 billion cubic metres of gas. However, in the binding phase, the interest was modest. The first binding round of the tender ended on April 8, and unofficial information claimed that just one bid was received. It was reportedly offered by INA, for just 100 million cubic metres of natural gas per year.
The terminal capacity should amount to 2.6 billion cubic metres per year, with about 1.5 billion cubic metres needed for the investment to be at least somewhat profitable.
The terminal on the island of Krk is planned as part of the EU’s effort to import gas from multiple sources, and not mainly from Russia. The target markets are the countries of Central and South Eastern Europe. The total cost of construction of the LNG terminal on Krk with the delivery pipeline is estimated at about 265 million euro, with the EU investing 101.4 million euro in the project.
Translated from tportal.hr.
