The port of Antwerp is getting ready to build an LNG bunker station for barges, with the concession agreement due to be signed at the beginning of 2016.
With the construction of a bunker station in 2017, LNG will become permanently available in the port at all times. Within the framework of the LNG Master Plan the Port Authority, with the financial support of the European Commission, carried out the necessary study work that resulted in an environmental permit and a construction permit for the planned installation.
Antwerp Port Authority has pioneered the use of LNG for several years now, with three important milestones being passed on the way to the imminent breakthrough.
- The first truck-to-ship bunkering for barges was carried out in December 2012. Since then barges have regularly bunkered with LNG in the port at quay 526 which has been specially equipped for this.
- Then at the beginning of 2014 procedures with checklists for truck-to-ship, ship-to-ship and terminal-to-ship bunkering with LNG were included in the Port Police Regulations, so that LNG bunkering became formally a part of everyday operations in the port. These official procedures should help to make the bunkering procedures safe, simple, efficient and consistent. In the meantime the Port Authority has undertaken to help ports in other countries draw up harmonised regulations. Indeed the Antwerp checklists served as the basis for those developed by the LNG working party of the International Association of Ports and Harbours (IAPH), which have now become the de facto world standard.
- After much experience with LNG for barges, a new milestone was reached in September 2015 when a seagoing ship – the Sefarina – carried out truck-to-ship bunkering in the port of Antwerp.
Source: The port of Antwerp
