PARIS, October 17. /TASS/. The Le Havre Administrative Court has ordered TotalEnergies to remove its floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal off the coast of this northern French commune, as it has not received deliveries for over a year and is actually closed. The decision was published on the court's website.

The court upheld the complaint of the Ecology for Le Havre association, which had previously unsuccessfully attempted to close the facility four times. The association's members opposed the special legal conditions created to ensure the terminal's operation, which is associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions. This time, the court ruled that the provisions of the law permitting such exploitation applied "only in the event of a need to increase national LNG processing capacities to ensure security of supply."

"Considering a number of indicators, the aforementioned condition was no longer met on the date of the contested decision [on the previous complaint from June of this year], a fact that neither the [relevant] minister nor TotalEnergies LNG Services France contested during the investigation," the court's ruling noted.

"We realized that this need [for additional supply capacity] was not realistic: gas deliveries had not been made for over a year," Pierre Dieulefait, chairman of the association told BFMTV.

The Cape Ann vessel was built in 2010 and is designed to store up to 145,000 cubic meters of LNG, as well as regasify it and pump it into the onshore transportation network. Its equipment was capable of regasifying up to 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, equivalent to 10% of France's total gas consumption. Since 2023, it has been moored in the port of Le Havre as part of efforts to increase LNG import capacity amid the government's declared policy of abandoning pipeline gas from Russia. Now, in accordance with the ruling of the Le Havre Administrative Court, France's Minister for Ecological Transition will be required to prepare a decree revoking the 2023 government decree authorizing its operation. TotalEnergies has not yet commented on the court's decision, and the vessel's destination has not yet been announced.