When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Germany realized that his dependence on natural gas from Russia had threatened his energy breach. It had no ports to bring in alternative energy sources that are needed to run its factories and houses warm. Three years later it now has four.
The most recent began to work at the end of May when a tanker called the energy consumption close to the coast in the port city of Wilhelmshaven was drawn and his load began to load: liquid natural gas from the Gulf coast of the United States.
Looking from a dike, where lambs and their mothers graze on the spring grass, Marco Alverà, Chief Executive of TES, a Green Energy Company in the Netherlands that helped to build the terminal, was estimated to be 400 million euros, at the request of the German government, which is now operating.
“This is the ice breaker,” said Mr. Alverà.
Mr Alverà and his colleagues have been looking at Wilhelmshaven for years and initially intended to concentrate on importing a cleaner form of fuel made with renewable hydrogen to help the country achieve his objective to reach climate neutrality by 2045.
But after Russia had closed a large part of the gas, it had wrapped it in Western Europe, Germany realized that even when it built more wind turbines and sun farms, it also needed it More sources of natural gasWhich is about 20 percent of its energy needs.
The new terminal in Wilhelmshaven is one of the many similar efforts throughout Europe to set up facilities for liquid natural gas Reduce the leverage of Russia About the region. The attraction of LNG is that it can be brought from any country – the United States, Qatar, Australia – that have the plants needed to cool gas in liquid shape so that it can be worn on special ships.
Since the summer of 2022, Europe has increased its ability to receive LNG by around 30 percent per year or 60 million tonnes, said Laura Page, an analyst at KPLER, a research agency. “Much of this increase has been to Germany,” said Mrs. Page.
LNG formed around 40 percent of European gas stocks in 2024, almost double from 2020. Almost half of the import came from the United States.
The general consumption of natural gas of Europe has fallen, but LNG meets many energy needs and can be purchased from different sources, which means that their dependence could increase in the coming years, especially if Brussels provides for obligations to further reduce the consumption of the Russian gas, that still almost 20 percent of the Pipeline and LNG.
“LNG from non-Russian sources is expected to play an increasingly important role as a flexible and geographically diversified supply source,” said a recent study by the agency for the cooperation of energy regulators, a European Energy Agency.
TES, the Dutch company, saw the opportunity to strengthen energy security and it agreed to help the German government build an LNG terminal. Just like most other recent additions, it is centered around a rented, floating vessel called the Excelsior that heats up the ice -cold liquid in a gaseous state. Blowjob from that terminal enters the National Raster on a 360 -hectare real estate that the company wants to develop.
In Mr Alverà’s plans, the existing terminal will eventually make way for a permanent, multibillion-euro energy complex connected to a scaffolding of € 600 million with docking space for six ships.
This hub, which Mr Alverà hopes to gradually sell to investors, would be able to process as much LNG several times as the floating barrel and, over time, process the gas cheaper.
Large shipments from LNG to Wilhelmshaven from the United States also have the potential to add billions of dollars in income – and to help to bridge the trade gap between the European Union and President Trump, which has encouraged to buy Europe to buy more American energy products.
“If Europe is serious about concluding a trade agreement with Trump on Meer LNG,” is Wilhelmshaven, who has one of the best ports in Germany, the only place in Europe that can be extended considerably, said Mr Alverà, who, as the former Chief Executive of Snam, has a large gas company in Italy.
Mr Alverà will probably be obliged to equip the hub to eventually process cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, but the arrival of fuels will be later than expected because they are not yet available in commercial quantities and the new government of Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz seems to follow a more pragmatic approach to energy supply.
The incoming Energy Minister, Katherina Reiche, a former Chief Executive of West Energy, a regional utility company owned by the Germany energy company E.ON, has called for the construction of at least 20 gigawatts of gas-fired electricity-upwinding power stations to feed the Equivalentententententententententromententententententententroment. Generate or generate the sun and have built a large number of winds and solar energy weather lines.
“We must acknowledge that electricity from renewable sources alone will not achieve cheap electricity supply, especially for energy-intensive companies,” Mrs. Reiche told an economic meeting last month. “We need new gas factories.”
Certainly, the war in Ukraine has changed the way in which Germany and the rest of Europe look at energy. As a result, Wilhelmshaven, that was something of a rear water, despite the fact that he was the only deep water port in the country, organizing a naval base and a container gate, is now looming in the plans of energy developers.
“What makes it different is that you are in the entrance gate to a very material market – namely Germany,” said Julian Meterell, a former Senior Goldman Sachs Banker who is a board member at Tes.
When the war broke out in Ukraine, Uniper activated a German usefulness that was adopted by the government in 2022, soon long plans to set up natural gasterminal In Wilhelmshaven.
Carsten Poppinga, Chief Commercial Officer at Uniper, said in an e -mail that LNG terminals were ‘resilience factors’ that served a number of purposes, including strengthening ‘independence of geopolitical risks’.
Two other facilities were also created in Brunsbuttel and Stade, both about 80 miles east of Wilhelmshaven, but having two terminals in Wilhelmshaven has given a boost to a coastal area that had long played a second violin to Hamburg, Germany’s largest port, officials say.
About 1,600 new jobs have come with them, making it one of the fastest growing regions in the state of lower Saxons, with the hope of continuous growth.
“LNG -Terminals with LNG ships here were the best marketing campaign for Wilhelmshaven,” said Holger Banik, Chief Executive of Niedersachsen Ports, who runs the ports of the region.
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