Late November to early December will see the completion of equipment installation on the ‘Prometheus’ LNG import ship, so it can be carried to a terminal and certified as a Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FRSU), said Natural Gas Infrastructure Company (ETYFA) President Yiorgos Ashikalis.
The terminal remains unknown as the FRSU certification will depend on the gap analysis currently being conducted by the project’s manager in relation to Vasiliko. The analysis will be submitted before Christmas.
Ashikalis told CNA that all the necessary equipment is onboard ‘Prometheus’ at the moment, ready for installation, ‘a significant development’, as he put it. He added that the reason the process took so long is that spare parts were not ready made. They had to be constructed and delivered before installation can begin.
The ETYFA President noted that by early December the installation process will have been completed and the ship will be ready for its journey to a terminal so it can be certified as an FRSU.
He further added that the ship will either end up at Vassiliko, depending on where the situation is with our own terminal or a different location will be chosen in order to complete certification.
‘This is a necessary process to ascertain in practice that the ship can maintain natural gas at -160 degrees without evaporating’, he clarified.
On the future of the Vassiliko project, Ashikalis said that the future status was still in ‘investigation and consultation mode’, but if the work can be completed soon, the Prometheus will end up there.
Otherwise, the boat will have to sail abroad.
It all depends on the timeframe that the project manager will provide following the gap analysis conclusion.
What’s important, he noted, is that Cyprus will soon have at its disposal the boat which lies at the heart of the system, being the most expensive one at that, to the tune of 200 million.