Bahrain is on track to begin LNG imports this spring

In the next few weeks, Bahrain is expected to receive its first import of liquefied natural gas (LNG), becoming the fifth country in the Middle East to import LNG. The Bahrain LNG import terminal will have a capacity of 0.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and will utilize an offshore floating storage unit (FSU) and a separate regasification platform connected via undersea pipelines to an onshore receiving facility located in the Khalifa bin Salman Port. An FSU vessel called Bahrain Spirit, with a storage capacity of approximately 173,000 cubic meters (0.8 Bcf/d), will serve the project under 20-year term charter.

LNG supply for the project will be procured in the global spot market to supplement existing domestic production until new production from the recently discovered offshore Khalij al Bahrain 2 oil and natural gas field comes online. Although Bahrain’s domestic natural gas production has increased in recent years, most of the increase is non-marketed production used for reinjection to maintain output levels at the country’s aging Bahrain field, which has been producing oil and natural gas since 1932.

LNG imports will be used to meet Bahrain’s growing natural gas demand, primarily from the industrial sector. Bahrain LNG will supply natural gas to two new combined-cycle natural gas-fired power plants scheduled to be in service in 2019–2020, as well a new refinery expected to come online by 2022. One of the natural gas-fired power plants (1.8 gigawatts (GW)) will be used to supply electricity to an expanded aluminum smelter, which is expected to be the largest single-site smelter in the world.

In 2018, global LNG regasification capacity expanded by an estimated 3.4 Bcf/d (3%) as two new countries—Bangladesh and Panama—began LNG imports, and several other countries (China, Turkey, Japan, Greece, and Finland) expanded their LNG import capacity. Early in 2019, Russia and Gibraltar (an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), have become the newest LNG importers. In 2019–2020, EIA estimates that an additional 9.6 Bcf/d of LNG import capacity will be placed in service. Most of this new capacity will be located in India (2.8 Bcf/d) and China (2.0 Bcf/d), accounting for about 50% of the total global capacity additions over this period. Further capacity expansions are expected in Jamaica, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea, while Ghana is expected to begin LNG imports by 2020.

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