Commissioning of the floating LNG terminal in Stade is scheduled to begin in September

After years of delays, the commissioning of the floating import terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Stade is scheduled to begin this month. The interim subcharter of the special ship “Energos Force” has ended and the ship is on its way back to Germany, a spokesman for the federally owned operating company, the German Energy Terminal Company (DET), said in response to a dpa request. “It will return to Stade as planned in September, which will allow the commissioning process of the terminal to begin.”

The DET continues that the supply of LNG has been ensured for the commissioning phase. The delivery of the first LNG tanker is expected in November. “At the same time, we are preparing the marketing of Stade’s capacities beyond commissioning and, as usual, we will inform the market at an early stage about planned auctions,” said the DET spokesman.

DET assumes that German feed-in capacities will continue to increase after the Stade LNG terminal goes into operation. “We expect that at the end of 2026 we will have fed noticeably more natural gas into the German gas network than in 2025,” said the DET spokesman.

Liquefied natural gas accounted for around 10 percent of German gas imports in 2025. The significantly larger volume of gas imports reaches Germany via pipelines.

Why the start was delayed

Originally, the Stade LNG terminal was supposed to go into operation much earlier. The pier for the special ship (also called FSRU) in the Stade-Bützfleth industrial port, built by the state of Lower Saxony, was completed in 2023. The “Energos Force” then arrived in Stade for the first time in March 2024 and was supposed to go into test operation, but this did not happen.

Because remaining work on so-called superstructure systems was necessary - this refers to technical systems such as loading arms and lines on the land side between the ship and the connection to the gas pipeline network. Last year, DET reached an agreement with the Hamburg consortium Hanseatic Energy Hub (HEH), which was previously responsible, to take over the construction work on the superstructure. There had been a dispute between the two companies over this work.

The “Energos Force”, intended for terminal operations and on which liquid gas delivered by tankers is converted into the gaseous state, had most recently been sub-chartered to the Egyptian state energy supplier EGAS since July 2025 and was mainly used in Jordan. “The income from this subcharter agreement flowed back into the federal budget after deducting ongoing costs,” said the DET.

Fourth state-operated terminal in Germany

The LNG terminal in Stade is the fourth LNG terminal operated by DET. There are also two floating terminals in Wilhelmshaven and one in Brunsbütteln. The Rügen LNG terminal in Mukran is operated by the company Deutsche Regas. The federal government pushed ahead with the construction of the billion-dollar infrastructure after the Russian attack on Ukraine in order to become independent of Russian gas supplies. According to DET, the location in Stade now completes the federal government's LNG terminal concept to secure gas supplies.

In addition to the floating terminal ship, a land-based terminal for importing liquid natural gas is planned in Stade. The much larger terminal is intended to replace the floating one and, according to previous information, will be operated with fossil natural gas by the end of 2043, according to approval.