Sovcomflot has announced that its LNG-fuelled crude oil tanker Gagarin Prospect has successfully completed its journey from Primorsk, Russia, to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
At the end of the journey, the vessel successfully delivered 104 815 t of crude oil. According to the statement, this voyage marked the vessel’s first export delivery of Russian crude oil under a long-term time-charter contract between SCF and Shell.
Gagarin Prospect is the world’s first Aframax crude oil tanker designed to operate on LNG as the primary fuel. It is the lead ship of the next generation of tankers, which will set a new standard of navigation safety and quality.
Sovcomflot claims that it is gradually switching its conventional tanker fleet from traditional heavy fuel oil to LNG in order to decrease its environmental footprint and to align with increasingly stringent sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions regulations.