Who are the new owners of the Rovigo regasification terminal
The Vtti-Ikav consortium wants to purchase the controlling shares of Adriatc Lng, the company controlled by Exxon and QatarEnergy that manages the Rovigo regasification terminal. What will Snam do? All the details
VTTI, a Dutch company specializing in energy storage, and IKAV, a German asset management group specializing in energy infrastructure, have formed a consortium to purchase the majority share of Terminale GNL Adriatico (or Adriatic LNG), the company that manages the regasification terminal of Porto Viro, near Rovigo. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2024.
WHO CONTROLS THE ROVIGO REGASIFICATION PLANT
Specifically, VTTI and IKAV want to buy the shares of the US oil company ExxonMobil and the Qatari state energy company QatarEnergy. ExxonMobil currently owns approximately 71 percent of Adriatic LNG and QatarEnergy 22 percent; Snam, the manager of the Italian gas pipeline network, has 7.3 percent.
WHAT WILL SNAM DO?
Snam therefore remains a shareholder of Adriatic LNG; However, it is not clear whether the company will decide to increase its stake. In fact, in January, during the presentation of the new strategic plan to 2027, the CEO Stefano Venier declared that "on Adriatic LNG there is an agreement made with the current partners, so in the event of an extraordinary operation we will have the option to increase our quota, if the conditions are right, to 15 or 30 percent. These two options are accompanied by a balanced redefinition of our role in society."
As Il Sole 24 Ore writes, from the moment of finalization of the agreement between the current shareholders and the VTTI-IKAV consortium, Snam will have forty-five days "to decide whether and to what extent to increase".
HOW MUCH IS THE ROVIGO REGASIFICATION PLANT WORTH
The Rovigo regasification plant – explains Il Sole 24 Ore – is the main entry point for liquefied gas arriving in Italy: in 2023 it managed a volume of 8.5 billion cubic metres, “covering over 50% of imports Italian".
Following the separation from Russian natural gas, which before the war was worth around 40 percent of total imports, Italy significantly increased its purchases of liquefied fuel (also called LNG). In February, according to Snam's findings, the share of LNG in total gas imports was 23 percent, even higher than that of Algeria, which remained at 21 percent.
The plant has a regasification capacity of 9.6 billion cubic meters per year and covers approximately 14 percent of national gas consumption. The increase is expected to be another 0.5 billion cubic meters per year, perhaps from 2026.
WHO CONTROLS VTTI
VTTI is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and is owned by Vitol (one of the world's leading commodity trading companies, which acquired control of Saras in February ), the Australian investment firm IFM Investors and the Emirati oil company ADNOC.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/rigassificatore-rovigo-vtti-ikav/ on Thu, 28 Mar 2024 12:46:28 +0000.