Under the leadership of Gasgrid Finland, construction work on the port terminal for the liquefied natural gas floating terminal has been completed in the deep harbour area in Inkoo. The work began in August 2022 and the contract included the pier and mooring structures and systems needed by the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) as well as the construction of a 2.2-km gas pipeline. Gasgrid has implemented the LNG floating terminal project to secure the supply of gas to industry, energy production and households as well as to safeguard Finland’s security of supply from winter 2023 onwards.

The LNG floating terminal will ensure the availability of gas in Finland far into the future and replaces gas supplies that Finland earlier imported from Russia. When fully laden, the LNG floating terminal vessel Exemplar holds around 68,000 tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The project will also enable gas deliveries to the Baltic states and even to Poland through the Balticconnector pipeline.

“Completion of the port structures is a really important milestone in the entire LNG floating terminal project. Everything is now in place for Exemplar to safely anchor in the deep harbour in Inkoo in December and connect to Gasgrid’s gas transmission network. The estimated arrival time is 25-28 December depending on weather conditions. Our goal the whole time has been to be able to start using the liquefied natural gas aboard the LNG terminal vessel already this winter. We are now very close to reaching this goal,” says Olli Sipilä, Gasgrid Finland’s CEO.

The 291-metre long Exemplar will be fastened to steel bollards attached to dolphins anchored to the bedrock by a total of more than 112 over 30-metre long bored piles. The structural strengths and tensile strengths are many times those used for normal shipping operations. In addition, a 2.2-km connecting gas pipeline has been built from the port to Gasgrid’s gas transmission network.

“The demanding contracting work on port structures and the connecting pipeline has now been completed. We kept within the exceptionally short timeline planned. Building the port structures for the LNG floating terminal vessel employed an average of around 100 construction and design professionals. The work was carried out in excellent cooperation with professionals from our able and reliable partnership network such as Boskalis Terramare and Ramboll,” says Esa Hallivuori, Head of the LNG Floating Terminal Project at Gasgrid Finland. “We have actively communicated the progress of the project also to local residents.”

About Gasgrid Finland

Gasgrid Finland Oy is a Finnish state-owned company and transmission system operator with system responsibility. We offer our customers safe, reliable and cost-efficient transmission of gases. We actively develop our transmission platform, services and the gas market in a customer-oriented manner to promote the carbon-neutral energy and raw material system of the future.