The first LNG tanker reached Rügen on Saturday night and is now docked at the port of Neu-Mukran. Jürgen Zier, a resident of the Sassnitz district, confirmed this to the Berliner Zeitung.
At around 9 a.m. the “Energos Power” was towed into the harbor, he said, and was now “tightly moored” in the anchorage on the inside of the harbor. From the balcony of his house, which is about a kilometer from the terminal, he can see the “monster”, 295 meters long and 47 meters wide. He can hear it too. It sounds like a helicopter is flying up and down, says Zier.
Sailed as a “ghost ship” across the Baltic Sea to Sassnitz
The tanker was accompanied by a large contingent of police, “water protection, border protection, customs”. The police patrol on land. There have been no protests so far. Nobody knew when the ship was coming, its arrival was kept secret, says Zier. It sailed like a ghost ship on its way across the Baltic Sea to Sassnitz. No name was visible on his navigation app, where he can track the route of ships.
The ship reached Mukran “undercover” and was traveling without a tracking signal, “which is actually mandatory for the ships,” the Ostseezeitung also wrote on Saturday. The extent to which permission had been granted for this trip could not initially be clarified, it is said. The ship had previously been in the Danish port of Frederica and set off for Mukran on Friday afternoon.
A few hours later, on Friday evening, the State Office for Agriculture and the Environment (Stalu) issued the operator, Deutsche Regas, the approval to check the operational viability of the regasification plant in the Mukran industrial port on Rügen, writes the Ostseezeitung. The water law permit for the test operation is expected to be issued next week.
The operating company Deutsche Regas confirmed on Saturday morning that the “German Baltic Sea” energy terminal had started trial operation today in the industrial port of Mukran. The aim of the trial operation is to test and put all land and ship systems into operation. Stephan Knabe, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche ReGas, said: “Deutsche ReGas has delivered again and is now in a position to make a greater contribution to the security of supply in Germany, especially in eastern Germany, and also in neighboring Eastern European countries.
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LNG terminal Rügen: The resistance is great
The “Energos Power” is just the first LNG ship to be docked in Mukran. Another, the “Neptune”, is scheduled to dock at a later date. A third ship will deliver liquefied natural gas once or twice a week. A year ago, the federal government included the holiday island of Rügen as a terminal location in the LNG Acceleration Act in order to secure Germany’s gas supply after the end of imports from Russia. In July 2023, the Bundestag gave its consent with 369 yes and 300 no votes.
The resistance on Rügen is great. Citizens’ initiatives and environmental associations are protesting against the environmentally harmful fracking gas, which is to be delivered frozen from the USA and Qatar and thawed on site. They warn of serious impacts on the Baltic Sea ecosystem.
The mayor of the Baltic Sea resort of Binz, Karsten Schneider, announced in the Berliner Zeitung a week ago that he would take legal action against the LNG terminal in the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig as soon as approval had been granted. Schneider said he was very confident that the lawsuit would be successful. No other terminal in the world is so “close to people and close to nature worth protecting”.