GIE releases the Small-Scale LNG database 2018

February 28, 2018

GIE releases its Small-Scale LNG 2018 database. The database provides the LNG industry and interested parties with an overview of the available, planned and announced small-scale LNG infrastructure and services in Europe. After being awarded this month The Most Supportive Gas Institution of the Year for its transparency tool ALSI at the Small-Scale LNG Summit 2018 in Milan, GIE continuously contributes to the increase of transparency in the LNG market.

Key findings

Small scale LNG infrastructure is heavily dependent on the proximity of large scale LNG import terminals. As of end 2017, 75% of operational small-scale LNG infrastructures were in countries that have large scale regasification terminals ¹ , mainly in Western Europe.

France, Italy, Spain and the UK have been driving the growth in small scale LNG infrastructure, increasing the number of their operational facilities by 133% over 2016-2017. This concentration in Western Europe is expected to continue: 65% of under construction or planned projects are in countries with large scale import terminals. This is further corroborated by the absence of development of facilities that could liquefy natural gas from networks into LNG, confirming the large-scale LNG import terminals as the key logistical springboard for small scale LNG.

Among the different types of infrastructure, LNG fuelling stations for trucks have witnessed the strongest growth over 2016-2017: both the number of operational stations as well as the number of under construction and planned stations have more than doubled to 167 and 71 respectively.

The number of sea and river small scale LNG infrastructure projects has also grown, albeit to a lesser pace, moving from 31 to 50 over 2016-2017 (+62%), while the pipeline of new under construction or planned projects showed a slight decline from 37 to 31 (-16%).

In the rail sector, 5 planned rail loading projects have been identified, in Northern Europe and Spain. None had been sanctioned as of end 2017, suggesting persistent challenges in kick-starting railroad LNG transport.

Source: GIE & FTI Consulting

¹ United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Turkey and Lithuania.

Note to editors

Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) is an association representing the interests of European natural gas infrastructure operators active in natural gas transmission, storage and LNG regasification. 16 European LNG terminal operators (LSOs) from 9 countries, operating around 90% of the existing LNG regasification capacity in the European Union are members of GIE. They are committed to promote the development of transparent and non-discriminatory access for LNG within a fully operational European internal market, underpinned by a stable and predictable regulatory framework.