France role as European gas transit growing

The 6 billion cu m/year of Norwegian natural gas Italy's SNAM will import will move through France under a transportation contract with Gaz de France. GdF Pres. and CEO Pierre Gadonneix disclosed the contract at the Gas Technicians Congress in Toulouse, France, late last month.

Meanwhile, the long-running saga of Nigeria's LNG export project took another twist last week as a legal battle over a canceled contract was settled; the settlement calls for a GdF terminal in western France to serve as a new receipt point, although GdF took issue with that.

Norwegian gas

GdF and SNAM last month signed a 25-year transit contract that bolsters France's role as "an important gas transit country for North Sea gas (moving) towards countries in Southern Europe," said Gadonneix.

Since 1993, Norwegian natural gas exported to Spain has transited France and the Pyrenees.

About 85% of the gas supplies to Italy will be delivered by Norway to Dunkirk, the terminus of the 840-km Norfra gas line, which will bring the gas from Troll gas field to Europe starting in October 1998.

The remaining 15% will be delivered to Taisniere-sur-Hon, on the Franco-Belgian frontier, near Valanciennes in northern France, where Norway's gas currently arrives in France.

SNAM will collect the gas at the Swiss frontier, south of Basel, from where it will join with the Transitgas pipeline (Swissgas 51%, SNAM 46% Ruhrgas 3%) that crosses Switzerland into Italy.

GdF will lay a 900-1,100 mm, 500-550-km gas pipeline from Taisni?re-sur-Hon to the Swiss border, south of Basel, where it will join Transitgaz (see map). Called "Artere des marches du Nord-est" (artery of the northeast border), the new pipeline will cost more than 3 billion francs and form the first interconnection between France and Italy's gas pipeline networks.

Work on the gas pipeline will start at yearend 1999 and be complete in 2001. Its exact route has not yet been determined, but it will be integrated with GdF's existing system through a number of connecting points.

GdF will also need to significantly expand capacity and upgrade facilities on its network through the addition of compression on the 1,100 mm, 185-km Hauts de France gas pipeline, currently under construction, which will link the Dunkirk terminal to France's network near the underground storage site at Gournay-sur-Aronde, north of Paris.

The GdF-SNAM agreement is subject to regulatory approvals.

Nigerian gas

Italian electricity utility Enel signed a preliminary agreement with the Nigerian government to take delivery of LNG after all-having tried to wriggle out of a delivery contract late last year (OGJ, Dec. 30, 1996, p. 28).

Enel canceled its agreement to take almost half the plant's output of up to 4.1 million metric tons/year, with first delivery due in 1999. The Nigeria LNG (NLNG) venture partners had begun construction of the plant and took the utility to the international court in Geneva.

Enel's cancellation was due to the Italian government's refusal to sanction building of an LNG import terminal at Montalto di Castro because of local opposition to the project.

The new deal calls for LNG to be delivered to a GdF terminal in northern France, and Enel to receive equivalent volumes of natural gas through the European gas grid.

Enel and NLNG have agreed in principle that the gas would go through GdF's Montoir-de-Bretagne LNG terminal, near Saint-Nazaire in Brittany (see map). A final agreement is reportedly to be signed at the end of December.

Queried about this, GdF said that nothing has been decided so far and that other routes (for instance, through Greece's forthcoming LNG terminal) would make better sense.

The Montoir-de-Bretagne option would require heavy investments: GdF's current gas network, as well as the Montoir-de-Bretagne terminal, does not have the capacity to handle such large additional volumes of gas.