For Stephan Knabe, everything is going according to plan: “115 more days until the first LNG reaches Lubmin,” says the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of “Deutsche Regas” on the phone. The tax consultant from Potsdam wants to enter the turbulent gas market together with his old friend Ingo Wagner, an investment banker.
For months they have been working on their vision of installing a liquefied natural gas terminal in Lubmin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. They have secured one of the world’s 48 FSRU special ships for regasification of LNG, concluded contracts with the port and submitted the first applications for approval.
If their plan succeeds, they could supply gas to eastern Germany as far as Bavaria this winter. But Knabe does not have a good relationship with the federal government, which is desperately looking for new gas suppliers outside of Russia.
“I’m surprised that the government didn’t at least ask us about the award of the state-financed FSRU ships,” says Knabe. The federal government has secured four of the special ships for around ten years for around three billion euros. It makes this available to the operators of the LNG terminals – an unusual construct, as Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) says.
But no time should be wasted. LNG terminals are to be built in Wilhelmshaven with Uniper as the operator and Brunsbüttel with Gasunie this year, in Stade (Hanseatic Energy Hub) and Lubmin (RWE) in the coming year.
Knabes “Deutsche Regas” with only around 20 employees was the only company to have procured its own FSRU ship – and would now like to have a second one: “We applied for the fourth federal ship as soon as the Lubmin location was announced. Private operators are treated unequally here,” criticizes Knabe.
He also considers the plans of the competition to be immature: “As far as I know, RWE and Stena have not yet published a finished concept for how they want to use the ship off Lubmin.” In fact, when asked, RWE expressed reservations. “Together with the federal government, we are in good talks with the aim of building a floating LNG terminal off Lubmin,” says a spokesman. He could not give details.
The Ministry of Economics is also keeping a low profile: “We are still in talks about the implementation of the FSRU in Lubmin, which also affects possible operators,” says a spokeswoman on request. Apparently, the four LNG locations were awarded under great pressure – there are still numerous open questions in Lubmin.
Because the location poses a number of hurdles. The bay in front of the port is too shallow for heavy LNG tankers to enter. The “Deutsche Regas” therefore wants to bring the liquefied natural gas to the port with small shuttle ships. But there is only room for one FSRU ship. The federal government’s would have to be secured around 20 kilometers off the coast and connected with a pipeline.
A sensitive intervention in the ecosystem of the national park. In addition, the space is limited because the two pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2, as well as many undercurrent cables of the current and future offshore wind farms are already on the seabed.
Stephan Knabe is therefore going on the offensive and expresses interest in the FSRU ship, which the federal government wants to put into operation in Lubmin “at the earliest at the end of 2023″. “We could use the ship immediately as an LNG storage facility and then connect it as another terminal in a second step. In this way, taxpayers’ money would be used efficiently,” says Knabe. The entrepreneur is pursuing a risky strategy. He wants to dock the FSRU ship directly to the unused Nord Stream 2 pipes. “It’s fast and brings a lot of gas to Germany.”
However, Knabe received a rejection from the Ministry of Economic Affairs: “The Nord Stream 2 is not certified and therefore not approved, so the question does not arise for us,” says a spokeswoman. The government fears the Kremlin’s reaction if the Russian pipes are de facto expropriated. In Moscow, this would probably be understood as a provocation and would provide an excuse to stop the last gas deliveries via Nord Stream 1. In Lubmin
