China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) has finished building the first phase of its floating LNG terminal in the northern port city of Tianjin, the company has announced.

The first phase consisted of a dock, two 30,000 cubic metre storage tanks, gas pipelines and an FSRU, said CNOOC Tianjin LNG. It will be capable of receiving 2.2 mtpa of LNG and has a supply capacity of 3 billion cubic metres per year.

The facility also has eight stations to load LNG onto tanker trunks. It will be able to deliver 350,000 tons of trucked LNG per year to markets 2,000 km away.

The FSRU Cape Ann, leased from GDF Suez and owned by H?egh LNG, started sending gas to Tianjin last December and had supplied more than 100 million cubic metres (MMcm) as of 24 February (see China’s first floating terminal fortifies Tianjin gas supply, 26 February 2014).

Tianjinreceived 230 MMcm from the terminal and offshore gas fields in the Bohai Bay in the November-to-March winter heating season. The volume accounted for 16% of the city’s gas use in the four-month period.

The floating terminal received a 63,307 ton LNG spot cargo onboard the Grace Cosmos vessel from Norway in September, its first shipment since taking delivery of a 28,963 ton cargo from Trinidad and Tobago in January.

The Norwegian cargo had an average value of $14.7/MMBtu and was bought for the winter heating season, CNOOC said. The company plans to import one cargo into Tianjin every month during the winter period.

CNOOC may stop imports into Tianjin after the winter ends in March to reduce losses on expensive imported gas, Liu Guangbin, an analyst with energy consultancy Sublime China Information, told Interfax. Volumes shipped to Tianjin have cost $15.11/MMBtu on average, while local residential gas prices are only $11.12/MMBtu.

“It is costly to rent a foreign carrier for storing and regasifying LNG. Onshore storage tanks will decrease the operational cost. Meanwhile, the terminal can increase income from selling trucked LNG with the truck-loading facilities,” said Li.