Skangass commissions LNG bunker vessel

Skangass has announced that it will operate the Coralius, a new specialised bunker vessel that will make LNG more readily available as marine fuel in the Skagerrak, Kattegat and Baltic Sea areas.

The company has entered into a long-term agreement for the vessel, which will offer greater flexibility by operating as a ship-to-ship (STS) bunker vessel, as well as a feeder. The new bunker vessel will be ready in early 2017.

LNG bunkering

The 5800 m³ bunker vessel will provide easy access to LNG bunkering to customers and limit the operational impact of calling a port in order to bunker. During the design phase, emphasis has been placed on the ship’s systems for STS operation to ensure that she is optimised to perform LNG bunkering offshore.

Tor Morten Osmundsen, CEO of Skangass, commented: “Recently, we entered into our first ship-to-ship bunker contract with NEOT in Finland. Building the new vessel Coralius is the natural step for meeting this demand, and further developing our marine LNG supply chain. Although we already satisfy our marine clients’ needs by truck-to-ship and terminals-to-ship bunkering, we need to further develop the infrastructure. By doing so, we will also be in a much stronger position to meet steadily rising demand for LNG.”

Clean fuel

Coralius will deliver LNG to marine clients in a flexible and safe way, offering excellent accessibility and high transfer rates to minimise bunker time. The increasing demand for LNG from marine customers can be attributed to LNG being a clean fuel, which meets MARPOL Protocol regulations that require sulfur emissions to be lower than 0.1% in emission control areas.

The building of Coralius is part of the joint industry project (JIP) FLEXI, which is one of the pilot projects included in Pilot LNG. The project is part of the collaboration platform Zero Vision Tool and it is co-funded by the EU. The aim of the project is to establish an LNG bunkering infrastructure. Skangass developed the project in cooperation with Anthony Veder and Sirius.

The vessel will be owned by the Swedish/Dutch joint venture Sirius Veder Gas AB and operated by Sirius Rederi AB of Sweden.

Adapted from press release by Katie Woodward

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/small-scale-lng/15012015/skangass-bunker-vessel-offers-lng-services-48/