April 3 (SeeNews) - The expanded liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on the Croatian Adriatic island of Krk, whose capacity will increase to 6.1 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year, is likely to start operations in the spring of 2025, Ivan Fugas, operations and technical affairs director of LNG Croatia, told SeeNews on Monday.
The project cost will slightly exceed the initially planned 25 million euro due to price inflation, but potentially will not go over 30 million euro, Fugas told SeeNews on the sidelines of the fourth Budapest LNG Summit.
The Croatian government has so far committed to fund the expansion but hopes that an EU grant could also be secured.
As much as 80% of the procurement and technical documentation of the expansion project is ready, with manufacturing works slated to begin by July. The works are expected to be completed by January or February 2025, however commissioning will need to wait until the end of the heating season of that year.
Public tenders for allocating the capacity should start in 2024, with the process still being worked out and dependent on the construction of a pipeline for regasified LNG, the official added.
The Krk terminal will be open to the market, but likely to be used mainly by operators from neighbouring countries.
As of January, the terminal capacity was sold out up until 2037, Fugas said in a panel discussion at the conference.
The LNG terminal, whose current capacity is 2.9 bcm, started operating in January 2021.
It delivers gas to the Croatian national transmission network, which is connected to fellow EU member states Slovenia, Italy and Hungary, as well as to non-EU members Serbia and Montenegro.
The terminal has a regasification capacity of 338,000 cubic metres per hour.