First Gen expects LNG terminal to be fully operational by end-2023

By Alena Mae S. Flores – September 26, 2023, 9:20 pm
from manilastandard.net

First Gen Corp. of the Lopez Group expects its interim offshore terminal (IOT) project in Batangas to be fully operational by end of 2023, a top executive said Tuesday.

First Gen president and chief operating officer Francis Giles Puno said the floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) and the onshore LNG facilities were now in the commissioning stage.

The IOT project is expected to be connected and start delivering liquefied natural gas to First Gen’s power plants in Batangas, he said.

“We have the floating storage reclassification unit, then we have the onshore facilities. Both of them are going through commissioning, so it’s not yet connected. So sometime by mid-October, hopefully, it will be connected,” Puno said.

“And then after that, after two or three weeks, or a month of running, the plants will be running,” he said.

The FSRU vessel BW Batangas arrived in June and chartered by First Gen’s wholly-owned subsidiary FGEN LNG Corp. (FGEN LNG) as part of its IOT project.

BW Batangas can store 162,524 cubic meters of LNG and regassify up to 500 million standard cubic feet of gas per day to enable LNG to be utilized.

Puno said First Gen already received the first LNG cargo.  The company  awarded the contract to Shell Eastern Trading (Pte.) Ltd. for the first LNG cargo based on an international tender.

The LNG will be used by the company’s gas-fired power plants at its Clean Energy Complex in Batangas City. First Gen owns four gas-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 2,017 megawatts.

“We hope to commission the gas by some time end of October. We already took delivery of the first cargo,” Puno said.