France-headquartered energy major TotalEnergies has announced the commissioning of the Cape Ann, the floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) for liquefied natural gas (LNG) located in the port of Le Havre.
The company informed that the terminal injected its first megawatt-hours (MWh) of gas into the grid operated by GRTgaz, using LNG from Norway.
Le Havre FSRU, with a regasification capacity of five billion cubic meters, or around 10% of French consumption, and chartered by TotalEnergies, is expected to be operational for the next five years.
The company has contracted 50% of the terminal’s annual capacity to supply it with LNG.
TotalEnergies has a global portfolio of about 50 Mt/y and benefits from an integrated position across the LNG value chain, including production, transportation, access to more than 20 Mt/y of regasification capacity in Europe, trading and LNG bunkering.
The company’s ambition is said to be to increase the share of natural gas in its sales mix to close to 50% by 2030, to reduce carbon emissions and eliminate methane emissions associated with the gas value chain, and to work with local partners to promote the transition from coal to natural gas.
To remind, in September 2023, environmental activists took steps to express their dissatisfaction with the arrival of the FSRU unit in French waters, and moreover, data from Disclose and Greenpeace France called into question the usefulness of the terminal for the energy independence of France and its European neighbors, aiming to show that the infrastructure is unneeded, even in the event of a cold winter.