Operations and major projects

The commercial service of the LNG terminal: Responding to customers' demands

24/04/17

The Dunkirk LNG terminal officially started its commercial operations on 1 January this year. Since then, the five people in charge of the commercial service have been working hard to meet the demands of the terminal's two clients: EDF and Total.

"The commercial service of the LNG terminal is in charge of numerous tasks," states its director, Christophe Liaud. "These are performed by five people based in Paris. For both of our clients, EDF and Total, these people must schedule the ships' arrivals and receptions, and ensure liquefied natural gas (LNG) unloading and reloading operations as well as LNG storage. They also need to be able to supply clients with the exact quantity of energy available to them in the tanks." But most of all, the commercial service team must be ready 24/7, year-round, to supply gas to the network. "The market for gas as LNG is global, and the market for gas in its gaseous state is European, which causes numerous price variations in a single day,” explains Christophe Liaud. "This is why we must be able to meet the combined demands of both of our clients to be able to bring in more ships or reload a ship while supplying more or less gas to the French and Belgian networks hour by hour. This high level of flexibility is undeniably one of the assets of our LNG terminal."

The first commercial tanker chartered by EDF departed from Qatar and made a stop-over on 22 and 23 January this year. 190,000 m3 of LNG were unloaded, representing 1.2 TWh of energy. "Currently, everything is working smoothly,” adds Christophe Liaud. "Our equipment is new and our first clients are progressively taking ownership of the tool. We know that we are being watched, and that potential clients want to understand what service value we can bring before they commit. All of that is very normal. In fact, it was expected. We will forge ahead progressively and traffic will keep increasing."

Article présenté sur la lettre d'information : Avril 2017