LNG tanker Arctic Princess (IMO 9271248), carrying Norwegian liquefied natural gas (LNG) has arrived at Finland’s Inkoo terminal, making it the second cargo to arrive there by ship since the October 8th outage of the Finnish-Estonian BalticConnector gas pipeline.
The Arctic Princess was carrying natural gas from the Arctic Hammerfest LNG plant and arrived at Inkoo late on Friday night local time. The tanker had loaded in Norway on September 17th, but then sat off the Danish coast as floating storage, a technique used by cargo owners when they expect higher prices at a later date, particularly in this case as the onshore storage tanks in the area were full and thus far winter demand had not got going.
The Arctic Princess cargo fits a late spot slot for a reduced capacity of 400-500 GW hours, which is about half of a standard slot, offered by the terminal operators following the outage of the BalticConnector gas pipeline.
The pipeline is set to be out of operation until next April at the earliest, leaving Finland reliant of deliveries of LNG to cover its domestic gas demand.
2006-built, Norway-flagged, 121,597 gt Arctic Princess is owned by RB-Quadrangle Leasing Ltd care of manager Hoegh (UK) Ltd of London, UK. ISM manager is Hoegh LNG Fleet Management AS of Oslo, Norway. It is entered with Gard P&I on behalf of RB Quadrangle Leasing Ltd. Gard is claims leader for Loss of Hire and Hull on behalf of Hoegh LNG Holdings Ltd. As of November 4th it was at anchor off Inkoo, Finland.