Nordic energy company Gasum has shipped in its second LNG cargo to the Inkoo floating storage and regasification unit terminal in what the company said is a “challenging situation”.

Gasum said its cargo arrived on Sunday 5 November, and unloading has been started. At the FSRU the LNG is regasified and fed into the Finnish gas pipeline grid.

This is the second LNG cargo Gasum has delivered to the Inkoo FRSU, since the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia suffered a rupture and was shut down in early October.

Repair of the pipeline is expected to take at least five months. In the meantime, all Finnish natural gas demand must be met through imports of LNG.

Jouni Liimatta, head of trading and optimizing at Gasum, said: “We are working hard to secure supply of natural gas over the coming winter season to our customers, whose operations depend on a steady supply of gas. It is a challenging situation, but we already have experience from rebuilding our pipeline natural gas supply chain after natural gas imports from Russia were suspended in 2022.”

The LNG cargo is approximately 400 GWh in size, it was supplied by Gasum’s longtime partner Equinor and comes from Norway.

Equinor is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company with a presence in 30 countries around the world.

In addition to this delivery, Gasum has reserved three more slots at the Inkoo FSRU for the upcoming winter season. These cargoes will ensure that Gasum can meet the natural gas demand of its customers until spring 2024.

In the coming months the Inkoo FSRU will also be equipped with the technical capability to load LNG from the terminal further into smaller bunkering vessels, improving the flexibility of cargo utilization.