On Wednesday, December 28, the floating LNG terminal Exemplar arrived in Finland, a vessel designed to help replace Russian gas supplies to the country. Recall that Russia stopped supplying gas to Finland in May because Helsinki refused to pay Gazprom for blue fuel in rubles. The Kremlin believed that in this way it would force the Finnish government to surrender, but it miscalculated.
Finland ended up in “unfriendly countries”. This is what Moscow refers to as states that have either imposed sanctions against Russia after a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or support these restrictions. President Putin ordered to take payment for gas from “unfriendly countries” exclusively in rubles.
To fill the deficit and get rid of dependence on Russian gas, Finland signed a 10-year Exemplar lease agreement with US company Excelerate Energy. Renting an LNG terminal costs about 126,000 euros per day.
The ship arrived at the Finnish port of Inkoo from Gibraltar. It is equipped with an installation for the regasification of liquefied gas and their injection into the pipeline system. Finland will be able to provide gas not only to itself, but also to Estonia. The BalticConnector pipeline will be used for this. The two countries closely coordinated their actions.
“The floating terminal proved to be the fastest and most effective solution for phasing out dependence on Russian gas in Finland and ensuring the continuity of gas supplies,” Finnish company Gasgrid said in a statement.
Liquefied gas will be delivered to Finland by tankers twice a month. The first ship is expected in January.
Source: Fakty
