Gran Canaria LNG Terminal

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Gran Canaria LNG Terminal, also known as the Arinaga LNG Terminal, is a proposed LNG terminal in Spain's Canary Islands.

Location

The terminal's proposed location is at Puerto de Arinaga on the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands).

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Project Details

• Parent: Enagás
• Location: Puerto de Arinaga, Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain (Canary Islands)
• Coordinates: 27.851956, -15.401621 (approximate)
• Capacity: 1.3 bcm/y, 1 mtpa
• Status: Shelved
• Type: Import
• Cost: €271.5 million (US$309 million)
• FID Status: FID approved
• Start Year: 2029

Note: mtpa = million tonnes per year; bcfd = billion cubic feet per day; bcm/y = billion cubic meters per year

Background

In December 2008, project developer Gascan awarded a consortium formed by Tecnicas Reunidas and Acciona a contract on a "lump sum turnkey" basis for the construction of the Gran Canaria LNG Terminal and the Tenerife LNG Terminal.

As originally proposed, the Gran Canaria LNG Terminal was to be technically identical to the Tenerife LNG Terminal. It was planned to include a storage tank with a capacity of 150,000 m³, three low pressure pumps, three high pressure pumps, two lines of Open Rack Vaporizers and a back-up submerged combustion vaporizer, a flare for emergency discharges, buildings, and a jetty capable to receive LNG carriers with a capacity up to 145,000 m³. Both terminals were designed to have a nominal capacity of 1.3 bcm/ year, with plans to increase capacity to 2 bcm/year in the future.

In 2015 Spain's natural gas grid owner and operator Enagás acquired a 100% stake in Gascan, the terminal's original developer. Previously, Gascan had been jointly owned by Endesa (47.18%), Enagas (41.94%), and Sodecan, a public company owned by the Canary government (10.88%).

Since 2015, administrative disputes between local authorities and the national government have led to significant delays in development of the terminal. In light of these delays, project owner Enagás has focused its efforts on developing the Tenerife LNG Terminal on the neighboring island of Tenerife and has removed all mention of the Gran Canaria project from recent corporate reports.

As of September 2020, Spain's Ministry of the Environment still had not issued a Declaration of Environmental Impact for the Gran Canaria terminal. Meanwhile, a new proposal for an alternate LNG terminal on Gran Canaria, the Puerto de la Luz LNG Terminal, has been gaining traction since 2018.

Given the Gran Canaria LNG Terminal's uncertain future, ENTSOG's Ten-Year Network Development Plan Projects Tables lists the project's expected operational date as 2029.

In May 2022, Spain's Council of Ministers approved a provision acknowledging the Canary Islands' opposition to constructing any regasification facilities on the islands. The measure approved by Spain's national government is in accordance with a previous commitment made by the Canaries' regional government to only use gas as a bridge fuel to green hydrogen, without the construction of new infrastructure. As a result, the Gran Canaria LNG project appears to be shelved as of June 2022.

Opposition

Opposition groups have cited the low utilization rates among Spain's LNG terminals to call into question the necessity of such extensive LNG infrastructure. According to Food and Water Europe, "Since 2008, all LNG terminals (except for Mugardos) have been expanded and the total regasification capacity has increased by 8%, despite a decline in gas demand...even though the utilisation rate of Spain’s LNG regasification capacity was at only ~23% on average between January 2012 and March 2019, same as the low EU average during the same time period! The need to have so much LNG regasification capacity is questionable and best illustrated with the El Musel LNG Terminal (7bcm/y and a 300,000m³ storage capacity) which was completed in 2012 and then directly put into 'hibernation', 'until demand picks up'. The terminal has not been used since then. Despite large underutilization, Spain was the 5th biggest LNG importer with the 5th biggest liquefaction capacities worldwide in 2018, and for both cases number 1 in Europe (followed by France). Since at least 2016, Spain repeatedly imported cargoes of fracked US gas through its LNG terminals."