For two months (since January 19, 2023), large-scale protests by citizens, outraged by the government’s pension reform (raising the retirement age from 62 to 64), have not subsided in France . The participants in the national strike block, among other things, the LNG terminals in order to prevent the supply of energy raw materials and force the authorities to abandon their plans. This led to record withdrawals of gas from underground storage and a sharp decline in blue fuel reserves.
Given the critical situation in the energy sector, the French authorities made great efforts and, on March 17, they succeeded in unblocking one of the country’s four LNG terminals – in the port city of Dunkirk, located on the shores of the English Channel.
The LNG carrier Fedor Litke (Fedor Litke, the fourth ice-class gas carrier of the Yamalmax type, which arrived from Yamal LNG with a cargo of Russian energy raw materials, became the first such ship to unload there on the night of March 18 and delivered in terms of about 100 million cubic meters of gas.Thus, Russian LNG outperformed its American competitor.
According to monitoring means, “Fyodor Litke” remained at anchor for almost 10 days. Now it follows the coast of Norway, returning to the port of Sabetta on Yamal. At the same time, according to the Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) association, the imported LNG was regasified and injected into the French gas transmission network in two days.
