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BEMIP Gas Regional Investment Plan 2017 |
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Image courtesy of Gasum
3.3.2 MARKET PLAYERS
Gasum is the sole importer and wholesaler on the natural gas market in Finland.
There are 23 local distribution companies in Finland. Less than 5% of the natural
gas is supplied by the local distribution companies and the number of households
using natural gas for heating is about 5,000 and for cooking about 21,000. The rest
is supplied directly from the transmission system. Gasum is the only TSO in Finland
and has been appointed system responsible of the Finnish natural gas system.
Gasum is a vertically integrated company acting as a wholesaler of gas in addition to
the TSO activities. Unbundling of Gasum will be performed when the right to dero-
gate from it expires.
Baltic Connector Oy, a state owned company founded in 2015 to act as a promoter
for the Balticconnector project is one player in natural gas market in Finland in the
sense of infrastructure development projects.
In the LNG market, the major player is Skangas where majority of shares is owned
by Gasum. Skangas operates in LNG market in the Baltic Sea and has LNG termi-
nals in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Gasum together with Skangas participates also
the Manga-consortium, which is constructing a LNG terminal in north of Finland in
Tornio. The Manga-consortium includes SSAB, EPV Energia, Gasum and Outokum-
pu. Skangas and Manga have their LNG-terminal projects already in progress where-
as the LNG-terminal project of Haminan Energia is still pre-FID phase. The Hami-
nan Energia terminal would be located in the south coast of Finland, in the city of
Hamina, and would be the only LNG-terminal in Finland having a grid connection.
The biogas market is more fragmented. The number of biogas producers is high and
quite often a local small-scale solution to utilise waste as energy. Gasum is an own-
er and operator of four biogas production plants that are injecting upgraded biogas
to the gas transmission grid. Haminan Energia owns and operates one biogas plant,
which is injecting upgraded biogas to the natural gas distribution grid. The injected
biogas is upgraded to reach minimum of 95% methane content. The total number
of biogas production plants in 2015 in Finland was 43 and biogas was utilised from
40 landfills. Some market consolidation has taken place recently, when Gasum
acquired two biogas production companies and holds now total of 10 biogas produc-
tion or upgrading plants.