Meridian Project Getting Hoegh FSRU, Vessels

Norwegian natural gas shipping firm Hoegh LNG plans to deliver a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) to Meridian LNG's planned British import terminal, Hoegh CEO Sveinung Stoehle told Reuters on Friday.

E.ON Global Commodities, the trading arm of German utility E.ON, on Thursday signed a deal to buy up to two million tonnes of regasified LNG per year from Meridian, with a final investment decision expected by mid-2016.

Hoegh said it will also deliver two or three LNG transport vessels to the project.

Hoegh shares were up 5.2 percent as of 0851 GMT.

"We developed this project three, four years ago. We sold it to Meridian but we kept the right to deliver the FSRU and two or three LNG vessels," Stoehle said.

The plan is to buy the LNG in the United States which will be taken to "Port Meridian" by LNG vessels and then transferred to the FSRU terminal which will transfer the LNG to a British pipeline and sold to consumers.

Stoehle estimated the cost of the FSRU at around $330 million and the LNG vessels at around $190-200 million each which will be financed through Hoegh LNG Partners and banks.

If the project gets the final go ahead in mid-2016, its start-up is planned for the first half of 2019.

The 20-year delivery deal with E.ON was the most important step in realising the project, Stoehle said.

The Port Meridian FSRU will be Hoegh LNG's second in Europe.

Hoegh LNG has a similar FSRU in Lithuania which came on stream in December last year.

This month, it also delivered an FSRU to Egypt to allow the country to begin LNG imports to ease its chronic energy shortages.

Reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord