![LNG terminal - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/LNG_terminal_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1025455.jpg)
South Hook LNG terminal is an
LNG regasification terminal near
Milford Haven and is the largest LNG terminal in Europe.
[
] Together with the smaller
Dragon LNG terminal
Milford Haven Waterway (''Welsh: Dyfrffordd Aberdaugleddau'') is a natural harbour in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is a ria or drowned valley which was flooded at the end of the Last Glacial Period, last ice age. The Daugleddau estuary winds west ...
nearby, it can handle up to 25% of the UK's gas requirement. The first tanker docked on 20 March 2009.
History
The project was announced in April 2003. The terminal is located at the
former Esso refinery at South Hook, Herbrandston.
Description
The terminal is built to receive, store and re-gasify
liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the vol ...
shipped from the
Qatargas 2 LNG plant
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...
in
Qatar
Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it ...
.
[ There are five storage tanks located onsite. The large tanks are each 94 metres in diameter and 31 metres high, rising another 12 metres to the top. The volume of a large tank is roughly that of the ]Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no governm ...
.[
]
The regasified natural gas is fed through the South Wales Gas Pipeline
The South Wales Gas Pipeline (also known as the Milford Haven pipeline) is the UK's largest high-pressure gas pipeline. The pipeline passing through Wales was built for National Grid plc and links South Hook and Dragon liquefied natural gas (LN ...
to the national gas network at Tirley, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean.
The county town is the city of Gl ...
.
Project company
The terminal is owned and operated by the South Hook LNG Terminal Company Ltd, a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum LNG Services (QG II) Ltd. (67.5%), ExxonMobil Qatargas (II) Terminal Company Ltd. (24.15%) and ELF Petroleum UK Limited (8.35%).[
]
Construction
The terminal was designed and built by CB&I. At construction peak, some 2,500 people were employed on site. Despite starting work some 3 months later than the nearby Dragon LNG terminal (which has two LNG tanks compared to the 5 at South Hook), South Hook was the first of the two to receive LNG and send natural gas into the national gas network.
The site slopes down towards the River Cleddau
The River Cleddau ( cy, Afon Cleddau) consists of the Eastern and Western Cleddau rivers in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. They unite to form the Daugleddau estuary and the important harbour of Milford Haven.
The name of the combined estuary – ...
. This allowed the tanks to be located such that they cannot be seen from the Milford Haven – Dale road that runs north along the terminal.
Controversy
Droning and vibration from the Qatargas Q-Flex and Q-Max vessels cause nuisance to local residents, who have formed a community group to pressure the South Hook LNG Terminal and Qatargas to comment on the issue. A trial of new exhaust silencers has been implemented but they are not producing a significant improvement in low level frequency mitigation. Local communities are forming a number of pressure groups to encourage the South Hook Terminal, Qatargas and regulatory Authorities to carry out further assessments and enforcement. These groups claim the aim is not to try to close the terminal down, but to encourage a better integration into the community through the use of quiet ships.
There is an ongoing controversy over the safety of the site spearheaded by the Safe Haven group. It is claimed by Safe Haven that in case of gas ignition, it could endanger twenty thousand lives and that there are concerns that sufficient risk assessments had not been carried out into the possibility of a collision or major incident at the port.[
][
]
Contracts
The main source of cargoes to the terminal is from trains No. 4 and 5 of the Qatargas 2 project in Ras Laffan, Qatar. These are jointly owned by Qatar Petrolium and ExxonMobil. The initial GSPA signed in 2005 was for 15.6 million tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s per year, but this was reduced to 10.4 million tonnes per year in 2009 when TotalEnergies
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...
acquired a 16.7-percent share in one of the Qatargas 2 trains.
In 2014, RasGas and Eon struck a deal for 2 BCM of gas to be delivered into either the IOG terminal or South Hook (likely the IOG) over a four-year period. This was the first deal to be struck by the sister company of Qatargas for deliveries into the UK – as previously the two companies kept their markets very much separate.
See also
* Dragon LNG terminal
Milford Haven Waterway (''Welsh: Dyfrffordd Aberdaugleddau'') is a natural harbour in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is a ria or drowned valley which was flooded at the end of the Last Glacial Period, last ice age. The Daugleddau estuary winds west ...
* Grain LNG terminal Grain LNG Terminal is a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal on the Isle of Grain, 37 miles (60 km) east of London. It has facilities for the offloading and reloading of LNG from ships at two jetties on the River Medway; for storing and blendi ...
References
External links
South hook LNG
{{DEFAULTSORT:South Hook Lng Terminal
Liquefied natural gas terminals
Natural gas infrastructure in the United Kingdom
Buildings and structures in Milford Haven
ExxonMobil buildings and structures