The US $700 million LNG powered Puerto Sandino Power Plant Project is back in the news.
New Fortress Energy, the U.S. Liquid Natural Gas Company is continuing with its plans to launch the project which will use LNG to power special gas turbines and produce 300 MW of electricity.
The latest news was an update last week (July 6th) when New Fortress announced that they had secured the remaining supply of LNG through to the end of 2027. This is sufficient to supply the needs of their portfolio of gas powered electricity generation, including Nicaragua.
It was back in February 2020, in Managua, when New Fortress CEO Wes Edens signed the power purchase agreement with Nicaragua’s Disnorte Dissur electricity distributor.
In October 2020 the National Assembly of Nicaragua approved a special law granting the Nicaraguan division of New Fortress Energy; NFE Nicaragua Development Partners, certain tax exonerations for the Puerto Sandino Power Plant project.
A year later, in February of this year, the Puerto Sandino project was formerly announced. This was followed by the delivery of two of the self-contained gas turbines and electromechanical control units to Puerto Corinto, for transportation to the project site.
Located adjacent to the Enatrel Sandino Substation, the generators will provide electricity directly to the national grid and to SIEPAC (System of Electrical Interconnection of the Countries of Central America) for the sale of surplus energy at times of low national demand. The link in this paragraph shows the progress at the site near Puerto Sandino.
New Fortress acknowledge that this type of electricity production is not in the renewable energy category, however, it does produce a much lower CO2-to-energy ratio and does allow for some of the older and inefficient Nicaraguan bunker fuel generators to be decommissioned.
The Puerto Sandino Power Plant joins the other Latin American projects that New Fortress has in Mexico and Brazil as well as the Caribbean, Europe and The United States.
New Fortress achieved huge growth this year with a US $ 2.18 billion acquisition of the Brazilian LNG and energy assets of Norway’s Golar and US venture capital fund Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners.
