Gaz de France LNG Terminal

Gaz de France is one of the largest suppliers of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in France. The company has two large LNG terminals at Montoir de Bretagne on the Atlantic coast in the Loire estuary near the town of Ville de Saint-Nazaire and also Fos-sur-Mer in the South of France.

Both of these terminals receive gas from sources in Nigeria, Algeria and Egypt. The Fos-sur-Mer (Fos Tonkin) terminal mostly receives gas from liquefaction terminals at Skikda, Arzew and Bethioua in Algeria, which are only a day’s sailing away.

The Montoir de Bretagne terminal is the largest with a storage capacity of 360,000m³ supplying over 15% of the LNG for the French market. The Montoir facility was first commissioned in 1980 and includes two pier facilities that can handle LNG carriers of up to 200,000m³ capacity. Montoir de Bretagne handles around 100 tanker shipments a year.

MONTOIR DE BRETAGNE LNG PLANT

The three 120,000m³ LNG tanks at Montoir de Bretagne are of the membrane type. Tanks consist of an inner and outer tank. The outer tanks are pre-stressed concrete and are 55m high, 0.9m thick and 65m in diameter.

The next layer is a rigid PVC-foam internal insulation that transmits the liquid pressure to the concrete tank. The inner containment layer is a 1.2mm thick gas-tight stainless steel corrugated membrane (used under Technigaz license), with a 11,500m² surface.

The LNG is transferred to the storage tanks using five unloading arms and utilising boil-off gas to maintain the pressure in the ship tanks. The LNG storage tanks are equipped with submerged pumps that transfer the liquefied gas to other high-pressure pumps at a pressure of 80bar and then to four open rack vaporisers. The LNG is then regasified using heated water from an adjacent power cogeneration plant.

EXPANSION

In December 2006 Gaz de France announced that they had plans to expand the Montoir de Bretagne terminal by 65%. This is in response to the expanding LNG market, which in 2005 saw an increase of 7.8%.

The market for LNG in Europe and France is expanding every year. The terminal’s annual delivery capacity is 10 billion cubic metres per year (bcmpy) but the expansion will take this to 16.5bcmpy.

The expansion will be undertaken in two phases – an initial increase of 2.5bcmpy will be completed by the start of 2011.

The second phase of 4bcm/yr will then be completed by 2014 and will include the construction of a fourth super capacity LNG tank and an increase in the regasification and gas output facilities.

CONTRACTOR

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc was awarded a contract in February 2007 for the provision of conceptual engineering studies for the LNG expansion project.

Although the expansion project is already planned Gaz de France is entering a period of consolidation and is due to merge with another large European gas supplier at the start of 2008. The merger partner is due to be Suez which has a strong market position in the Benelux countries. The new company will be called GDF Suez.