The river cruise ship Viking Idun was involved in a collision with a chemical tanker on the Western Scheldt near the Port of Antwerp in Belgium just after midnight on April 1. Viking Cruises informed that there were no injuries reported on board the vessel.
The Port of Antwerp plans to launch a hydrogen bunkering station during 2019, its CEO Jacques Vandermeiren informed during a recent forum. This development comes as the Port aspires to become multi-fuel, bringing several alternative fuels for the shipping industry, such as LNG and methanol. The Port of Antwerp is now working on the logistics of the project, while a timeline cannot be confirmed yet.
Belgium’s Port of Antwerp finished 2018 with development in all segments, establishing the sixth consecutive yearly record as it reported a growth of 5.2% compared to 2017. The figures for 2018 present that the port’s total transshipment reached 235.2 million tonnes, a new record, with growth in all cargo types.
Port of Antwerp is starting an ambitious new project, as it will gather various players in the port area to promote the sustainable production of methanol. The Port considers methanol an important raw material, and for this reason it took the next step in the transition to alternative energy sources and a carbon-neutral port.
Antwerp is the fifth-largest bunkering port in the world. For this reason it aims to become a Multi-Fuel Port by 2025, meaning a port where in addition to conventional fuels, alternative, more sustainable fuels can also be made available. In the short term the Port has decided to include methanol, hydrogen gas and electrical energy in the bunkering market.
With the shipping industry entering a new, environmentally-friendly period, stakeholders in the maritime industry are seeking for ways to reduce their ships’ emissions. Apart from choosing green fuels and scrubbers, ports come to add another solution: Cold Ironing. This is the process of providing shoreside electrical power to a ship at berth, while its main and auxiliary engines are turned off.
BP Marine announced that it will begin to retail low sulphur fuel that complies with upcoming MARPOL regulations which are limiting the sulphur content of marine fuels. Namely, BP will be introducing the new very low sulphur fuel oil, with a maximum 0.5% sulphur content, after conducting successful sea trials in the Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Antwerp and Singapore hubs.
This video, filmed on March 10, at the Port of Antwerp depicts strong winds of 12 Beaufort hitting the Port Of Antwerp last week, knocking down containers on the dock. As the winds were so strong, the video depicts a 40-foot ONE container being blown out from a stack of containers and being thrown into the water.
Fluxys and Titan LNG have cooperated to build the FlexFueler 002, a bunkering pontoon to make LNG more widely available as shipping fuel in the Antwerp port and region. The pontoon will be commissioned by mid-2020 and support the shipping industry in its change to cleaner operations. Titan LNG will be the long-term operator of the pontoon.
A fleet of huge, new built oil tankers are scheduled to ship diesel out of East Asia. Five very big crude carriers, that ship approximately 2 million barrels of oil each, are for the time being placed in the seas of China’s eastern and southern coasts. Two additional new-builds are to be added in the fleet. If all of the vessels were fully loaded, they would have what is currently held in Europe’s key trading hub of the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp ports.
