Golar Power forms alliance with Galileo to promote LNG

The agreement was signed on 2 July in Sao Paulo and will leverage Golar Power’s natural gas distribution project, without pipelines, in the interior of Brazil. The project will also tap into new biomethane sources. Galileo will support the venture by providing its Gas 3.0™ Solutions suite: gas conditioning, distributed LNG production, LNG filling stations, and regasification plants.

With this initiative, Golar Power intends to increase the share of local LNG in its supply and accelerate energy transition towards a cleaner energy chain with a lower carbon footprint in Brazil: switching from diesel fuel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), or heavy fuel oil (HFO) to natural gas.

This ambitious goal is part of the National Novo Mercado de Gás [New Gas Market] Program that considers LNG an economical and low carbon footprint fuel source. Furthermore, the agreement between the two companies targets achieving a cleaner fuel source by focusing on the production of biomethane LNG (Bio-LNG).

First steps towards new gas sources

The first Golar Power orders to Galileo involve are reportedly in relation to the provision of two micro LNG clusters. The first cluster will include two Cryobox™ LNG-production stations, which, connected to a Gas Conditioning ZPTS™ Plant, will produce 30 tpd of LNG in a mature upstream field in the state of Bahia. The second cluster will be installed in Sao Paulo to capture and liquefy biomethane coming from landfills. It will have a Cryobox Station with the capacity of providing up to 15 tpd of Bio-LNG.

“Thanks to the alliance with Galileo, we will add Bio-LNG to our portfolio and residential liquefied gas, thus offering consumers less expensive and cleaner alternatives to conventional fuels,” stated Marcelo Rodrigues, Vice President of Golar Power.

With these two micro-LNG solutions, Golar Power will take advantage of Brazilian gas out of the system and commercialise it as liquid fuel. Once distributed through the road network, LNG will feed electric power stations, natural gas distributors, industries, as well as light and heavy vehicles.

“Unlike previous generation technologies, our gas treatment and liquefaction technologies adapt to scattered methane sources, which frequently are those closest to consumers. That is why they were developed for distributed LNG production,” pointed out Horacio Andrés, Vice President of Galileo Technologies subsidiary in Brazil.

“The solutions developed by Galileo allow for the escalation of the installed capacity by means of modules; this will help us meet the growth of the demand with flexibility and supplement our small scale LNG projects and technologies,” elaborated Rodrigues.

By distributing LNG through the road network, Golar Power will overcome the limits posed by the local gas network infrastructure: Brazil only has approximately 9409 km of pipelines. “Only 5% of Brazilian municipalities are served by gas pipelines. Our challenge is to take natural gas to those places, and that is why we chose LNG for small scale distribution,” concluded Rodrigues.

Very soon: in ‘Green Corridors’ and industries

The development of new gas sources in Brazil will be paired with new consumption alternatives. Golar Power will install Galileo’s LNG filling stations in BR network stations to establish ‘Green Corridors’, the Brazilian version of ‘Blue Corridors’, where LNG fuelling will become a cleaner & more cost-effective alternative to the vehicular sector.

By using LNG, heavy vehicle fleets will reduce their CO₂ exhaust emissions (one of the largest global warming contributors) by approximately 20% and eliminate particulate, nitrogen oxide (NO_x), and Sulphur oxide (SO_x) emissions.

Industrial clients will be supplied with regasification plants and storage systems to facilitate gas consumption in furnaces, engines, and turbines.

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquid-natural-gas/03072020/golar-power-forms-alliance-with-galileo-to-promote-lng/