Italy receives first shipment of US-supplied LNG

Rome: The first cargo of LNG from the United States arrived in Italy on Wednesday, May 14, Italian energy company Edison said in a press release.

The LNG carrier Elisa Aquila was made available to Edison for the transport of the LNG. The gas was loaded at the Calcasieu Pass facility in Cameron Parish in Louisiana and then transported across the Atlantic over the next two weeks.

The ship offloaded approximately 165,000 cubic metres of LNG at the Port of Piombino on Italy’s Tyrrhenian Sea coast within hours of its arrival on Wednesday. The LNG will then be regasified and introduced into the national network.

Under a long-term contract with US-based Venture Global, Edison will withdraw 1.4 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year (equivalent to one million tons of LNG) from the Calcasieu Pass plant, using its two 174,000-cubic-metre capacity LNG carriers, for a total of 14 cargoes per year.

Edison imports approximately 14 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year into Italy, with import contracts from Qatar (6.4 billion cubic metres), Libya (4.4 billion cubic metres), Algeria (one billion cubic metres), Azerbaijan (one billion cubic metres) and the United States (1.4 billion cubic metres), meeting 23 per cent of domestic demand.