The number of ports planning to offer LNG bunkering facilities is growing, and oil majors are increasingly looking at adding this service to their portfolio. IBIA’s Annual Convention heard about concrete plans in Tenerife, and by the oil major Shell, and got a forecast from SGMF about the uptake of LNG bunkers in the next 7-10 years.
Arjan Stavast, LNG Global Business Development Manager Marine for Shell, told the IBIA conference that Shell intends to set up LNG bunkering facilities in locations where they are already active in LNG supply to domestic users, including Norway, Rotterdam, Gibraltar, Middle Eastern locations, Singapore and Houston. In Rotterdam, for example, Shell is planning to put an LNG bunker vessel into service in 2017.
Shell has also signed an agreement with the Port of Gibraltar, the busiest bunkering port in the Mediterranean, to look into developing LNG bunkering in conjunction with providing supply to a natural gas-powered electricity plant being built there.
Singapore is also going to introduce LNG bunkering. “Our aim is to provide all types of fuel the market needs,” Md Elfian Harun, Assistant Director (Bunker Services), Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) told the IBIA convention.
Singapore has already awarded two LNG bunker supply licensees, one of them to Pavilion Gas and the other to a Shell/Keppel partnership. Singapore is also supporting vessels to adapt to use LNG as fuel with funding, and developing LNG bunkering standards and procedures.
In Europe, several ports have been making use of European Union (EU) funding aimed at encouraging the uptake of LNG as a transport fuel, including Tenerife. This island in the Atlantic, just off the northwest coast of Africa, will soon be offering LNG bunkering, Airam Diaz, Commercial Director, Ports of Tenerife, told the IBIA convention.
A regasification plant is being built at a new port, Granadilla, to provide power for Tenerife, and there are also plans to fuel vehicles and ships. The new facility is already slated to provide LNG to two new AIDA cruise vessels, starting in 2017.
Source: IBIA
