When its interim import terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) will kick off commercial operations in 2022, FGEN LNG Corporation, a subsidiary of Lopez-led First Gen Corporation, will in parallel be setting in motion the market introduction of gas for locators in economic zones and industrial parks in the country.
The company said it will start development of small-scale LNG (ssLNG) solutions to industrial users catered to by its affiliate firm First Philippine Industrial Park (FPIP) in Santo Tomas, Batangas.
First Gen President and COO Francis Giles P. Puno said “several existing and potential new locators have expressed keen interest in using LNG and natural gas directly for various manufacturing process applications; and indirectly in the form of reliable, flexible, environmentally responsible power.”
In a statement to the media, First Gen noted that FPIP “could receive LNG via trucks and specialized insulated containers supplied from FGEN LNG’s interim offshore LNG terminal,” which is sited at its First Gen Clean Energy Complex in Batangas.
The distance between FPIP and the site of the company’s LNG import terminal, to be underpinned by floating storage regasification unit (FSRU), is around 50 kilometers.
Jonathan Russell, chief commercial officer of First Gen, said the company will initially assess the possibility of “introducing ssLNG to FPIP by installing a satellite LNG receiving, storage and regasification facility, which can serve park locators and other nearby industrial customers.”
The subsequent phase to that, he said, will be to target “bringing LNG to other islands in the Philippines using LNG carriers.”
He stressed that the company is enthusiastic “to democratize the use of natural gas in the Philippines using new technology to create small-scale (ss) LNG opportunities in the Philippines by taking LNG supplied in bulk in large LNG carriers to the project and delivering it in small quantities to new industrial, commercial and remote customers that have so far been unable to access natural gas due to the large investment and undertaking required to construct traditional gas infrastructure, such as transmission pipelines.”
Russell explained that FPIP will be connected through a ‘virtual pipeline’ and this will be concretized through the use of ISO containers and trucks “to supply LNG to meet the needs of new and existing locators at (FPIP’s) prime location.”
First Gen specified that “provision has been made at the First Gen Energy Complex to install an LNG truck loading facility to load LNG into ISO containers transported by truck.”
The Lopez-led firm specified the application of LNG technology “can enable the delivery (of LNG) at locations in which developing a traditional gas pipeline network is not feasible.”
Given the constantly advancing business trends in the gas sector, First Gen indicated that ssLNG “may provide a considerable opportunity for the Philippines because of its geographic conditions, with many outlying locations and islands in which electric power is provided by thermal power generation using diesel and other petroleum products.”