"The floating LNG terminal in Stade has failed. This means that the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony have wasted a three-digit million euro sum," explained Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) on the disaster surrounding Stade.

The floating LNG terminal in Stade, Lower Saxony, is therefore on the brink of cancellation. The project has "no prospect of successful completion", explained the state-owned operating company Deutsche Energy Terminal (DET), which also operates the other floating import terminals for liquefied natural gas in Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel.

Ongoing dispute

The background to this is a dispute with the company Hanseatic Energy Hub (HEH), which had been commissioned to build the connection infrastructure.

DET accuses HEH of "continuous non-fulfilment of contractual obligations" and therefore cancelled the contracts with the company in January. HEH had not provided proof of the technical completion of the so-called superstructure facilities required for the docking of the terminal ship. The test operation of the "Energos Force" terminal ship, which has been ready since March 2024, was therefore unable to begin.

HEH disagrees. The superstructure in Stade has been completed and has been accepted by the approval authorities, a spokeswoman explained. HEH has thus fulfilled its contractually agreed tasks. According to the contract, "DET is responsible for commissioning and operation".

Talks are currently still underway with the Federal Ministry of Economics in order to put the terminal into operation after all.

The background

HEH is currently building a land terminal in Stade for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which will later be converted to CO2-neutral, hydrogen-based energy sources such as ammonia. The facility is scheduled to go into operation in 2027, with the ground-breaking ceremony taking place last June. According to the spokesperson, these plans are not affected by the problems with the floating terminal.

HEH had supported the commissioning of the floating LNG terminal in Stade - a so-called Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) - with the construction of the necessary facilities at the port of Stade.

According to information from those involved in the project, it is not yet certain whether no regasification ship will actually dock in Stade in the end. There are talks about whether another operator - possibly from the energy industry - could take over the operation of the ship.

Another conflict

There was also a conflict between the private operator Deutsche ReGas and DET over the operation of one of two FSRUs in the port of Sassnitz-Mukran on the island of Rügen. Deutsche ReGas had accused DET of "ruinous competition" in this case: the second special LNG ship in Sassnitz could not be operated economically.

Irrespective of the disputes between state and private companies regarding the new terminals, environmentalists have been calling for years for the capacity for landing LNG in Germany to be significantly reduced again - the planned dimensions would not be needed and would unnecessarily prolong the use of natural gas as a fossil fuel.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent disruption to Russian natural gas supplies, the German government worked flat out to build an LNG infrastructure. Natural gas in the form of LNG can be imported to Germany from other countries such as the USA, Qatar, Egypt or Algeria.