At the Barcelona regasification plant today, Enagás Chairman Antonio received the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Energy watchdog (Comisión Nacional de Energía, or CNE), Mª Teresa Costa Campí, and the President of the Barcelona Port Authority, Jordi Valls i Riera.
During the visit, the Enagas Chairman highlighted the main features of the facility, which has storage capacity of up to 540,000m3 of LNG and emission capacity of 1,650,000m3(n)/h.
The CNE Board was particularly interested in the planned enlargement of the regasifier. They saw the landfill where the seventh LNG storage tank, with a capacity of 150,000m3, will be built. Enagás' Chairman noted that there are also plans to build an eighth LNG tank, with similar characteristics, and to raise emission capacity to 1,950,000m3(n)/h.
The capacity additions are essential to guaranteeing the supply of natural gas to both the Spanish and Catalonian gas systems. In Catalonia, forecasts point to annual growth in demand of 4% to 2016.
The CNE Chairman appeared especially interested in the innovations being made at this plant, such as the use of the residual cold from the gasification process for cooling in urban areas. This could allow up to 17 GWh of recovered cooling per year, while at the same time avoiding the emission of 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year.
