The History of GIIGNL

By Jean-Yves Robin

x  The press release for the

GIIGNL inaugural meeting in December 1971, in French and Japanese.

With this issue’s spotlight on LNG, Jean-Yves Robin looks back at the formation and history of the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL) whose membership is composed of nearly all companies in the world active in the import and regasification terminalling of LNG.

In the late 1960s, Japan had received its first shipments and embarked down a path that would soon establish the country as the world’s number one LNG importer while, in the Atlantic basin, the US made preparations to receive Algerian volumes, and Italy and Spain pushed ahead with plans to join France and the UK as European LNG importers.

The technologies needed to create a safe and effective LNG supply chain were novel and complex for the time. The industry was opening up new realms of engineering as it introduced natural gas liquefaction, LNG storage and LNG regasification on a large scale, as well as LNG carrier containment systems and concepts such as cold recovery.

A club for top executives with common challenges

At that time, LNG importers faced formidable technical and economic challenges when purchasing, shipping and handling LNG in the volumes required to justify the commercial viability of the project and to satisfy the needs of their customers. All these activities needed to be developed and implemented in the context of their respective national energy policies and regulatory frameworks.

A few companies, including Gaz de France, took the initiative to try to bring together, from across the globe, the top executives of those gas companies involved in LNG imports and facing common challenges. The idea of creating an industry association of LNG importing companies received very favourable feedback from the interests concerned.

Thus were laid the foundations of a new association consisting of 19 founding members. The International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL) began in December 1971, just as the nascent LNG industry was taking its first tentative steps.

The association had, at least in its early stages, the character of a club without a rigid legal structure and statutory framework. The members exchanged information and developed studies covering the scientific, technical and economic aspects of issues such as purchasing, processing, transportation, storage, handling, regasification and the various uses of natural gas.

GIIGNL’s work was undertaken with the aims of promoting the development of the industry and pursuing objectives of common interest, including the development of safety and industry best practice guidelines. Delegates from the US member companies in particular, anxious not to breach any anti-trust laws, appreciated the association’s set-up and working methods.

The first meeting of the group was held in Paris in December 1971 under the leadership of Gaz de France. Jean Le Guellec, Honorary President of Gaz de France, accepted the presidency of GIIGNL while Hiroshi Anzai of Tokyo Gas and Howard Boyd of El Paso were appointed vice-presidents.

The association functioned well throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In tandem with the relatively slow expansion of the global LNG industry in those formative years, GIIGNL’s membership grew only slowly and did not rise above 25. The resignations of some US members whose projects had been discontinued were offset by new members joining from Asia.

Robert Venet, a former GIIGNL director, comments on the 1980s period of the association: “The late 1970s had been a very turbulent period for the LNG industry because many of the leading buyers of gas, especially in the US, had become rather disillusioned by the high prices being demanded by Algerian LNG producers.

“In Europe some new players, like the Italian companies, wanted to enter the LNG scene by acquiring some supplies. However, eventually most opted instead for cheaper pipeline supplies, especially from Russia.

“The LNG boom happened in Asia and specifically in Japan when supplies from Indonesia began to flow.

“The International Group of LNG Importers was essentially an association which offered a meeting place for the top executives of our LNG importing member companies. At that time Howard Boyd, who was a leading personality in the US gas industry and had chaired El Paso, was GIIGNL president, while Pierre Alby from Gaz de France, Denis Rooke from British Gas and Hiroshi Anzai from Tokyo Gas were vice-presidents. All were distinguished captains of the gas industry in the 1980s and chief executives of leading gas companies.”

The GIIGNL way of working

“The activities of the association were mainly centred around two annual meetings. These gatherings allowed member representatives to meet, exchange views and commission joint studies on topics of specific interest. These projects were carried out by the members themselves, of which one would act as coordinator.

“The study topics selected covered a very wide range of technical, operational, regulatory and commercial issues. It goes without saying that those sensitive commercial issues which might have impinged on competition law were strictly off-limits.”

GIIGNL worked on the basis of rules which had been laid down by the founding members at the first General Assembly in Paris in 1971 (these rules have since been transformed into statutes, the current version being updated in 2008). Day-to-day functioning of the association was managed by a permanent chief officer or general delegate in consultation with and under the guidance of the group’s president.

The statutes require that at least two meetings a year are held. These are a General Assembly of all members, in which all decisions of statutory importance are taken and plenary discussions are held, and an Executive Committee meeting attended by a selection of member companies representing the three regions in which the industry operates, namely

c  Dinner invitation to

the inaugural meeting (Paris, Eiffel Tower, December 2, 1971).

v  The 2014 GIIGNL General

Assembly in Venice, Italy.

Europe, the Americas and Asia. The Executive Committee receives an update on the activities of the association and prepares proposals to be voted on by the annual general meeting.

At that time, during the meetings, the discussions were simultaneously translated into three languages – English, French and Japanese. Since 2009, English is commonly used for the meetings, with simultaneous interpretation in Japanese. Gaz de France, British Gas and Tokyo Gas had assumed clear leadership roles in the meetings and the organization in general. The first non-Japanese Asian members were Korea Gas in 1985 and CPC Corporation, headquartered in Taipei, in 1989.

New milestones for the LNG industry, new opportunities for GIIGNL

Over the past 20 years, GIIGNL’s membership has grown strongly. Today the Group has 76 member companies in 25 countries worldwide. The membership comprises nearly all the companies active in the import of LNG or in the operation of LNG import terminals. By region, 35 of the members are from Asia, 31 from Europe and 10 from the Americas, including North and Latin America.

It is a non-profit organization and its resources only come from membership fees. The association constitutes a forum for exchange of experience among its members, with the goal of enhancing the safety, reliability and efficiency of LNG import activities.

With the support of experts from member companies involved in its two study groups (Technical and Commercial), the association regularly produces reference publications covering a wide variety of topics, from safety of operations to standard agreements. Each spring GIIGNL also publishes its annual statistical report, The LNG Industry. The report gathers, in one single place, all the key figures of the last 12 months: LNG trade flows, spot and short-term traded volumes, recently concluded contracts as well as new plants (liquefaction and regasification).

In a fast-changing environment currently characterized by low oil prices and abundant new LNG supplies, GIIGNL has a great role to play in fostering dialogue between members, sharing best practices and experience with new LNG players, and continuously promoting the development of safe LNG import activities.

Jean-Yves Robin is General Delegate at the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers.

ROSEN Group successfully inspects high speed gas pipelines without reducing velocity of gas flow

By Johannes Keuter with Michael Rapp

New innovative tool from the ROSEN Group leads to successful completion of projects in Asia and Europe. The ROSEN Group has successfully completed several high speed gas pipeline inspection jobs in 20”, 28”, 34” and 36” pipelines for an operator mainly responsible for procuring and distributing gas supplies for domestic use via its vast gas pipeline network in Southeast Asia and for an

operator in Europe. Hence, ROSEN has achieved another milestone in minimizing the influences of Inline Inspection (ILI) on the gas pipeline operation.

Within a couple of months, the developments of new Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) based 20”, 28”, 34” and 36” Corrosion Detection Tools (CDP) combined with new 20”, 28”, 34” and 36” Extra High Resolution Geometry Tools (XGP) were completed on a tight customer schedule.

The contract required the ILI package to include the following inspection capabilities without interrupting normal gas supply:

l Metal Loss Inspection (MFL)

l High-Resolution Geometry Survey (XGP)

l Location Mapping (XYZ Gyro)

The ROSEN Group already has a successful track record in building combined ILI tools that include the above-mentioned capabilities. However, the challenge in this project was the strict customer requirement to not reduce the gas flow velocity during the planned inspections. Usually, the gas flow during Inline Inspections has to be reduced to allow for accurate and reliable inspection data. This inevitably means a financial loss for the pipeline operator, as less gas is delivered to its end customers. Using a new, innovative tool design, ROSEN Group – once again – achieved a leading selling proposition in the market: No reduction of gas flow is necessary anymore, resulting in stable revenues for operators!

In these cases the pipelines were operated at gas velocities of up to 10 m/s. To guarantee a high data quality at given pipeline parameters, the maximum inspection velocity should not exceed 3 m/s. This resulted in the requirement to reduce the ILI tool velocity by up to 7 m/s, considering the given pressures. To achieve this goal the tool designs were optimized to allow more bypass along the units. In combination with the differential pressures of the ILI tools, more bypass allows a higher velocity reduction of the tool compared to the gas velocity. At the same time the design must still stabilize the tool and carry its weight.

Through close cooperation between the various R&D disciplines of ROSEN, a new approach has been developed. For instance, the sensors were mounted onto the pulling unit of the three-segment combined 28” MFL and Geometry Tool, instead of installing the XGP sensors on the rear unit of the tool. This design copes with the challenge to protect the sensors from the high gas flow. The sensors are not within the main gas flow any more, but are located between the cups of the pull unit, thus being protected by them. For the two-segment combined 34” and 36” MFL and Geometry tools, additional protection components were used. In parallel the design of the polyurethane cups and the tool layout were adjusted to maximize bypass. These solutions provide enough bypass area to route the gas flow around the tool and to avoid the back of the tool pushing forward at the same time (which is necessary for stable run conditions). These different design elements were used to find the optimal solution between stabilization, protection and bypass for ILI tool velocity reduction.

Additionally, the variable speed control unit (SCU) and its operation algorithm were improved. The automatically adaptive variable SCU of ROSEN is a well-known, proven and established solution to regulate ILI tool velocity during an inspection to get high quality data. After finalizing the inspections for the client, the data from the MFL and XGP were indeed of high quality. All reports have been handed over to the client and ROSEN has hereby come up with a unique solution, reinforcing the market position for ‘high speed inspections’.

The combination of a new bypassoptimized tool design and an improved speed control algorithm provides the optimal technical and commercial solution for the inline inspection of high speed gas pipelines.