FSRU Prometheas to leave Shanghai next month

The floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) Prometheas, which will form part of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project at he, will set sail for Cyprus from Shanghai at the beginning of December, Energy Minister George Papanastasiou said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a meeting of the Nicosia chamber of commerce and industry (Evel), he said the ship will take between 20 and 45 days to arrive.

Ministry spokesman George Arotis told the Cyprus Mail this large discrepancy in potential arrival times has come about as the ship will first have to go to a port somewhere on the way from Shanghai to Cyprus to be officially certified for its use as an FSRU.

The ministry has not yet decided on where the certification process will be carried out, and as such, the route has not yet been mapped and the timetable for its arrival remain loose.

Arotis added that while the ministry has a number of possible destinations in mind, these are not yet publicly available.

The news surrounding the FSRU comes after the Cypriot government and the CPP-Metron Consortium (CMC) came to an agreement regarding the FSRU’s delivery last month.

The FSRU is one of a number of moving parts in the project, with public natural gas infrastructure company Etyfa set to select a new project manager for the project’s onshore infrastructure in the coming weeks.

The project manager will then assist Etyfa in drafting tender documents for the contracts for the remaining works at Vasiliko, which are to be re-tendered after CMC had in July terminated its contract with Etyfa to build the whole LNG terminal.

They had accused Etyfa of “bullying” and of leaving CMC to work “without proper or timely payments” for years.

They added Etyfa and its advisers on the project “had little to no relevant experience in any of the essential components for delivering a project of this nature: oil and gas, engineering, procurement and construction works and conversion of an LNG carrier to a floating storage regasification unit.”

“The position has become untenable. Contrary to the promises that were made by the [energy] minister in March, CMC has still not received any payment whatsoever for its work in 2024.

“That is but the latest failure in a four-year history characterised by wrongful withholdings and delayed payments. No contractor can be expected to work indefinitely on credit. That was not the deal that CMC signed up to. It was not the deal that the EU agreed to fund,” they said.

The FSRU had been one of the key points of contention between Etyfa and CMC, with CMC insisting that the vessel was ready in Shanghai and that Etyfa had “inexplicably refused to take delivery” of it while also frequently not meeting payment deadlines.

The situation worsened after the contract was terminated when the European Commission demanded that Cyprus repay almost €69 million which had been paid in grants for the terminal.

The energy ministry had announced it had received a letter from the European Commission which listed “possible irregularities which occurred during the evaluation period of the tender” for the construction project.

The commission’s letter, according to the ministry, “alleges two substantive violations”, the first being the criteria for awarding the tender [to CMC] in December 2019 and the second being the signing of the bilateral agreement upon approval of an additional €25m in funding in June 2022.

The European public prosecutor’s office (EPPO) had earlier in the same month publicly announced the opening of an investigation into possible procurement fraud, misappropriation of EU funds and corruption related to the Vasiliko LNG terminal.

Cyprus signed the contract for the LNG project in December 2019. The entire project should have taken 22 months to complete.