A floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), which breathed life into Greece’s first offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, is months away from returning to regasification duty.
Following the suspension of regasification services, which emerged in late January 2025 due to a technical issue leading to the damage of the booster pumps onboard the FSRU Alexandroupolis in the Aegean Sea, Gastrade claims to have taken all the necessary actions to address this and repair the booster pumps.
The firm has disclosed a timeline for the restart of activities based on the progress of the remediation works to ensure the safest possible resumption of operations, which indicates that the terminal will resume unloading and regasification services on August 15, 2025.
The available regasification capacity is expected to be capped at 25% of its maximum sustainable capacity of around 41.5 GWh/day, with available redundancy regarding its booster pumps. This will be offered from August 15 to September 30, 2025, under certain operational and commercial conditions.
While the 25% cap is set to be lifted as of the start of the next gas year from October 1, 2025, certain operational constraints may remain for a limited time. Previously known as an LNG carrier named GasLog Chelsea , Greece’s FSRU underwent a ten-month conversion at Seatrium’s shipyard in Singapore.
Afterward, the unit, which was envisioned to be connected to the European country’s National Natural Gas Transmission System (NNGΤS) via a 28-kilometer pipeline developed by Corinth Pipeworks, reached Greece in late 2023 and received its first LNG cargo in February 2024 .
With an annual regasification capacity of around 5.5 billion cubic meters, the FSRU is expected to support Gastrade’s expansion of the Alexandroupolis LNG terminal to a second unit, which is anticipated to have roughly the same technical capacity.
As the energy demand in Southeastern Europe is expected to continue to be met with fossil fuels for several decades, Gastrade signed a five-year deal with Venture Global to secure LNG supply for markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from the U.S. player’s terminals in Louisiana.