Portugal negotiates gas export deal with Germany and Poland
Portugal is negotiating an export deal with Germany and Poland to export gas from Sines
The idea is to use Sines to store gas from the United States and then reroute it using smaller ships to other countries in Europe.
This would help relieve the pressure on both Germany and Poland which are more dependent on Russian gas says newspaper Público.
The Government has already announced that it would invest €35 million at Sines for storage and reexport facilities.
It will create this new hub with faculties to hold Liquified Natural Gas. It is not known how much Portugal would make from such a storage business.
Either way, the project would still take several years to complete in various stages, one of which would be the construction of a new gas deposit at the REN terminal which could take around 2 years and cost around €30 million.
In the short term, to meet short term demand, adaptations to optimise the capacities of ships to hold more gas would be made at Portugal’s largest deep-water port within six months at cost of around €4.5 million, according to newspaper Negócios.
An official Government source confirmed that the “technical study is complete” and would provide a “viable, flexible and alternative solution” given Sines has a central geographical position in the Atlantic Ocean”.
The Government says it would finance the port and ship adaptations through the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) and PT2030, as well as private funds.
All told, Portugal has plans to invest around €23Bn on high tech projects over the next few years, including at the Port of Sines to modernise the infrastructures and turn the area south of Lisbon into a major logistical, fuel and technology hub.