‘LNG is no longer in the planning stage, it is no longer in the conceptual stage - it is safe and very financially viable, and more importantly, it is viable for our clients,’ says Peter Keller, Executive VP, TOTE Inc. and Chairman of SEA\LNG.
In his presentation to delegates at the recent Maritime Week Americas conference in Panama, Keller provided an update on TOTE’s LNG bunkering programme and also looked at the wider prospects for the marine LNG sector.
The company’s two Marlin Class vessels, the Isla Bella and Perla del Caribe, - the world’s first dual-fuelled containerships - entered service in late 2015 and early 2016, and operate between Jacksonville, Florida and Puerto Rico.
These vessels, said Keller, have already bunkered over 30 million gallons of LNG in some 200 bunker operations. Each ship bunkers every week and burns around 1,000 of LNG every round trip.
The Clean Jacksonville, a 2,200 cbm bunker barge, is also under construction at Conrad Industries. This will be the world’s first LNG membrane barge, utilising GTT technology, where LNG is at atmosphere and is not carried in pressure tanks.
The barge is scheduled to undergo cold trials in this month, will then move on to Harvey Gulf at Port Fourchon to ‘borrow some gas from my friends at Shell for gas trials’, said Keller, and will then return to the shipyard for completion.
‘We expect her to be operating and moving LNG from our Jacksonville plant to the ships at the end of June/early July,’ he said.
TOTE has also embarked on the conversion of its Orca class vessels to dual fuel operation.
‘I will tell you, quite honestly, that conversions are not for the faint hearted,’ noted Keller. ‘It is quite difficult – it is much easier to move into a new house than it is to renovate an old house!’
But, he continued: ‘We are excited about this project and while it will take a little longer than we anticipated and wanted, it will, in fact, work and these ships will be operating on LNG by the early 2020s.’
Since the Isla Bella and Perla del Caribe entered operation, they have refuelled using ISO tanks. Keller told delegates that, ‘It was a lot easier to build the ships than it was to build the supply infrastructure.’
TOTE has developed a supply chain using a skid: 25 trailer loads of LNG are transferred to ISO tanks and this volume of LNG can be loaded onto the vessels in less than five hours – four trailers at a time. After the Clean Jacksonville enters service, the ISO tanks will be repurposed for service in Puerto Rico and other islands.
Using LNG offers ‘a tremendous competitive advantage’, said Keller, and facilitates a good degree of fuel price certainty.
‘We have long-term contracts for the offtake of our LNG; I can pretty much tell you what the cost of my fuel is going to be 10 years from now, within probably a 5%-10% [range of change].'
Commenting on the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) recent decision to require shipping to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2050, compared to 2008 levels, Keller said: ‘We have to be careful that we don’t let the greenhouse gas (GHG) argument totally hijack the air quality issues.'
While ‘we embrace the IMO’s targets’, he said, ‘the maritime industry [is responsible] for only about 2.2% of the world’s GHG problem.
‘If you look at the targets we have set, this is extremely aggressive for the industry. It is right – but there is certainly a lot more to be done in other segments and other industries.’
Compared with oil-based bunker fuels, Keller said that TOTE’s GHG reduction ‘is around 24% with the LNG we are using right now, which does not have any biogas or any other input.’
Responding to the concerns raised by some industry stakeholders over the safety of LNG as marine fuel, he countered: ‘If we had called LNG liquefied natural energy we wouldn’t have had a problem. When you say gas, everyone says it is going to blow up; it is not, and it’s not going to pollute the water - it’s not going to pollute anything.’