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Track 4 of 7

Receiving and regasifying

What an import terminal does with a cargo once it arrives: storage, vaporisation, send-out into the grid, and the floating units that do the same job without the onshore construction.

An import terminal is the simpler end of the chain and the more varied one. It has to receive a ship, store the liquid, warm it back into gas and push it into a pipeline network at whatever rate the market wants, which in a cold snap is a great deal more than the average.

The choices that distinguish one terminal from another are mostly about heat and speed. Where the sea is warm, seawater vaporisers do the work almost for free; where it is not, a terminal burns part of its own throughput. Where a country needs supply within a year rather than five, a moored vessel does the job of the whole facility and can leave when it is no longer needed.

This track also covers what happens past the terminal fence: trucking, ISO tanks and the small-scale distribution that reaches places no pipeline serves.

7 modules

All written.

  1. 01
    What an import terminal actually does

    An LNG import terminal receives cargo from a ship, stores it as a cryogenic liquid, pumps it to pipeline pressure and warms it back into gas for delivery into a grid.

  2. 02
    FSRU versus onshore regasification

    An FSRU is a ship that stores LNG and turns it back into gas while moored, doing the job of an onshore import terminal without the onshore construction.

  3. 03
    Vaporiser types: ORV, SCV and ambient air

    A vaporiser is the heat exchanger that turns pressurised LNG back into gas at an import terminal, using seawater, burned gas or ambient air as the heat source.

  4. 04
    Send-out, peak shaving and the grid connection

    Send-out is the rate at which an import terminal delivers regasified LNG into a pipeline network, and it is the capacity figure that governs what the terminal can actually do.

  5. 05
    Storage operations: ageing, stratification and rollover

    LNG storage operations are the monitoring and filling practices that keep stored LNG mixed and of known composition, preventing the stable density layers whose sudden inversion is called rollover.

  6. 06
    Truck loading, ISO tanks and small-scale distribution

    Small-scale LNG distribution moves liquid past the import terminal by road tanker, rail and ISO container to satellite storage plants, industrial users and fuelling stations beyond the pipeline grid.

  7. 07
    Break bulk and island supply chains

    Break bulk is the practice of receiving a full LNG cargo at a hub terminal and redistributing it in smaller parcels by small carrier, barge or road to markets too small or too shallow for a conventional ship.

Vocabulary for this track

23 terms, defined in full in the glossary.