Adriatic LNG Terminal Project for Aker Kvaerner

Aker Kvaerner has been awarded a contract to conduct detailed design and planning activities for future offshore phases of the proposed LNG receiving terminal in the North Adriatic Sea. The company has previously performed the front end engineering for the same facility. The new contract will run to the end of September 2004 and is worth approximately USD 50m.

The phase two design contract is signed by Aker Kvaerner Contracting AS, a company within the Aker Kvaerner group. Some elements of the terminal project are still to be approved by the Italian authorities. If approved and constructed, this could be the first concrete offshore LNG terminal in the world.

The contract does not include the final portion of the design work (i.e., the pipeline from the metering station to the main national grid).

The work with the gravity-based structure continues in Aker Kvaerner's Oslo organisation while the Houston organisation continues the design of the LNG re-gasification topside.

Aker Kvaerner has already completed front-end engineering design (FEED) work for the LNG terminal. This phase is now completed. The terminal will be located 17 km from the shore in waters that are 29 metres deep. The terminal will receive LNG shipped rom Qatar, re-gasify the products, and feed the gas through pipeline to the Italian gas distribution network. The terminal has a storage capacity of 250,000 cubic metres in tanks in the concrete substructure, and it can re-gasify approximately 6 million metric tons of LNG per year.

The participants in the Adriatic LNG Terminal project include ExxonMobil, Qatar Petroleum and Edison, a major Italian energy company.