LNG

Gaztransport and Technigaz (GTT), the French maritime LNG storage technology company, has received an order from its partner Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company of China for the design of new storage tanks for two Chinese liquefied natural gas carriers.

GTT said that the latest orders were on behalf of Ocean Jade Investment.

Ocean Jade is a joint venture between Hong Kong shipowner Wah Kwong, Chinese leasing company CSSC (Hong Kong) Shipping and China Gas Holdings.

GTT will design the tanks of these two vessels, which will each offer a capacity of 175,000 cubic metres.

“The tanks will be fitted with the Mark III Flex membrane containment system developed by GTT,” said the Paris-based company.

The delivery of the vessels is scheduled between the first and the second quarters of 2028.

At the start of July 2024 GTT received another order from the China Merchants Heavy Industry shipyard in the eastern province of Jiangsu for the tank design of a new LNG carrier as its orders stack up.

GTT said the order was for the tank design of a new LNG carrier on behalf of Danish ship-owner Celsius with delivery scheduled for the third quarter of 2027.

Qatar expansion orders

At the end of June 2024, GTT received a second wave of orders from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding for sets of tanks for 10 more vessels as part of QatarEnergy’s “Hundred Ships Programme” to handle the deliveries from multiple expansion projects in the Arabian Gulf.

That GTT order for tanks fitted to 10 large LNG carriers brought to 18 the number of Qatari LNG vessels ordered from China with the new generation of storage tanks.

GTT said it would design the tanks for these 10 very large LNG carriers, which will each have five tanks with a total capacity of 271,000 cubic metres capacity.

The tanks will be fitted with the No. 96 Super-plus membrane containment system developed by GTT.

Delivery from GTT is scheduled between the first quarter of 2030 and the fourth quarter of 2031.

GTT earlier received orders in February 2024 for the designs of tanks for eight Qatari LNG carriers, also with five per ship and with total capacity of 271,000 cubic metres.

The eight-ship order was under a “strategic cooperation agreement” with China State Shipbuilding Corp., the leading Chinese shipbuilding group.

Delivery of this batch is scheduled between the second quarter of 2028 and the fourth quarter of 2029.

The ship designs will have the same overall dimensions as the current largest Q-Max ships but with an increased cargo-carrying capacity.

The Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan with some of the world’s largest oil and gas fields on its territory and part of an infrastructure network with Russia to supply natural gas to China in competition to LNG, is boosting its own domestic gas output as well as its role as a gas transit nation.

Temasek, the Singapore wealth fund that recently sold all liquefied natural gas interests to Shell, plans to focus on investing in Chinese companies with large domestic sales sales rather than those that depend on foreign markets.

UK-based engineering firm Wood Plc has been chosen as lead consultant for an independent study of the next big potential Asia-Pacific LNG export project, the Greater Sunrise Development using gas resources from the Timor Sea.

Conrad Asia Energy, an Australian-listed natural gas exploration and production company, has entered into a binding gas sales agreement for the domestic portion of the Mako gas field in Indonesia and with an option to sell the balance of the pipeline gas to LNG importer Singapore.

Conrad has signed the agreement to sell domestic gas to Perusahaan Gas Negara (PNG), the gas utility subsidiary of Pertamina, the national oil and gas company of Indonesia.

The ASX-listed company said the deal with PGN for gas from the Mako gas field, in which Conrad has a 76.5 percent participating interest, is an important step in the commercialisation of the largest undeveloped gas field in the West Natuna Sea.

PGN is Indonesia’s largest gas company and a separate GSA is being negotiated with Singaporean parties for the remainder of the Mako gas resource to be exported by pipeline to the Asian city state.

Singapore pipeline

The West Natuna Sea gas gathering system is already connected to Singapore.

However, PGN is proceeding with constructing a tie-in pipeline to the island of Batam across the Malacca Strait that will connect the Natuna Sea volumes to the Indonesian market.

It was noted by Conrad that completion of both GSAs would be significant landmarks on the path to a final investment decision for the Mako project targeted for the fourth quarter of 2024.

Conrad said it was moving towards finalising a GSA for the Mako export gas for Singapore over the coming few weeks.

The gas will supply Singapore through an existing pipeline in competition to the LNG cargoes delivered to the Jurong Island LNG terminal.

UK company Empyrean Plc is also a shareholder in the project. The Mako field contains contingent resources of 376 billion cubic feet of which 21 Bcf are net attributable to Empyrean.

Long-term supplier

The West Natuna Sea gas fields have been supplying Singapore with natural gas for more than two decades and the Mako project is expected to continue this supply for at least another 10 years from 2026.

In addition to the significance for the Mako development, Conrad said that the accord builds an important platform for Conrad with Indonesia’s national companies.

Conrad said it would continue to grow its business relationship with PGN through its other discovered gas resources offshore Aceh and related to which the two parties signed an accord in February 2024.

“Our focus has been finalising the underwriting gas sales agreements between the Mako Joint Venture, the Indonesian Government and Regulator and Singapore,” said Conrad Chief Executive Miltos Xynogalas.

“These agreements are the essential documents that demonstrate financial viability of the project, which in turn underwrite value and financial sustainability,” the CEO added.

Australian liquefied natural gas bunkering company Pilbara Clean Fuels (PCF) has completed a study for the development of an electric-driven and small-scale liquefaction plant at Port Hedland in Western Australia as part of a joint venture to fuel iron-ore carriers with LNG for voyages to Asia.

Oceania Marine Energy (Oceania) is also part of the venture and would operate a marine fuel bunkering business using LNG re-fuelling vessels to be chartered from Kanfer Shipping of Norway.

The third member of the development study is Registro Italiano Navale (RINA), the Italian maritime classification society,  which has developed an concept for an LNG-fuelled 209,000 deadweight ton (DWT) Newcastlemax dry bulk carrier design.

In November 2023 PCF, Oceania and RINA had signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on studies to define the commercial and emissions reduction benefits their combined concepts could deliver to ship owners and charterers for the Pilbara-to-Asia dry-bulk minerals export trade route.

Study findings

The joint study has now been completed and the findings show that an accessible and achievable pathway is there for LNG fuel use on a well-to-wake basis for international shipping on this trade route.

“The study presents a flexible and commercially attractive IMO-compliant marine fuel strategy to ship owners, operators and charterers amidst competing alternative fuel,” said a statement.

It proposes a “Green Corridor” marine fuels solution for the Western Australia-to-China bulk minerals export trade route.

Western Australia is the largest producer of iron ore in the world, with current production of over 850 million tonnes per annum, the majority of which is exported from the Pilbara region.

“The joint study addresses a set of factors which together constitute a pathway to achieving net-zero emissions for this trade route, and for the international shipping industry in general,” a statement explained.

“It concludes that well-to-wake emissions for the Pilbara to Asia export shipping industry can be reduced by more than 90 percent by 2050, using fuel and technologies already in use today and that can be implemented to optimize vessel fuelling and operations,” it added.

Voyage optimization

The study found that the low-carbon LNG plant planned by PCF has the potential to initially produce LNG with emissions of less than 200kg of greenhouse-gas per tonne, which can be further reduced to around 50kg/t LNG.

“LNG bunkering in the Pilbara region offers a substantial voyage optimization by eliminating the need to deviate to other major bunkering hubs in the region, thus significantly reducing emissions,” the companies added.

“This also reduces by 25 percent the emissions associated with transporting LNG over long distances, compared to LNG bunkering in other ports and ensures competitive pricing for LNG,” the report said.

RINA’s bulk-carrier ship concept also features a novel propulsion arrangement which achieves a fuel saving of 12 percent when running on LNG at current market speeds and offers the charterer greater fuel flexibility and enhanced economic benefits by reducing LNG consumption.

Mubadala Energy, the international company headquartered in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, has made a second large natural gas discovery with LNG potential in the Andaman Sea offshore Indonesia.

Feb 19 (LNGJ) - Pavilion Energy, the Singaporean natural gas and LNG bunkering company, has successfully deployed the newbuild small-scale LNG fuelling vessel “Brassavola” for her maiden ship-to-ship fuel operation. The Singapore-built “Brassavola” was delivered just two weeks ago to Pavilion under a charter. The bunkering operation involved a dual-fuel bulk carrier, the “Mount Api”, chartered by global commodities and mining company Rio Tinto. This follows the recent delivery of the “Brassavola” to Pavilion Energy at the end of January 2024.

   “The steady development of our LNG bunkering solutions from truck operations to our ship-to-ship LNG bunkering activities today is a testament to the strong operational expertise of our team,” said Malcolm Lim, Division Head of Singapore Hub at Pavilion. The “Brassavola” will also be deployed by TotalEnergies Marine Fuels to serve its customers under a long-term agreement with Pavilion.The bunkering ship was built by Seatrium and delivered to the local owner Indah Singa Maritime, a subsidiary of Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines.

Asian liquefied natural gas demand is projected to increase in 2024 led by China even amid competition facing gas-fired power from electricity generated in the region by coal and with more pipeline gas heading for the Chinese border from Russia.

UK-based major Shell is completing a fourth-month maintenance turnaround of the “Prelude FLNG” production vessel that operates off the northwest coast of Australia and which has suffered shutdown over the last few years because of technical issues as well as industrial unrest among workers.

The FLNG vessel is moored 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of the town of Broome on Western Australia’s Kimberley coast and has 3.6 million tonnes per annum of production capacity.

Shell has attempted to tackle some long-term technical issues at the facility with maintenance and work that started in August 2023.

Demand window

“Prelude FLNG” will be coming back on stream to capture the winter demand surge in Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

The LNG carrier “Symphonic Breeze” is expected at the “Prelude FLNG” production hull early in December.

Shipping data showed that the “Symphonic Breeze” departed from the Japanese port of Naoetsu on November 23 with the destination of the vessel with 145,500 cubic metres capacity given as the Shell export facility.

Prelude FLNG has suffered several outages since it started production in June 2019, including a fire that led to a full power loss in December 2021 and several other automatic shut-downs because of fire alarms going off.

“Prelude is a complex facility in a remote offshore location,” said Shell in a statement.

“This is its first major turnaround and we continue to work through the process methodically taking as much time as required to ensure safe execution of all activities,” said the London-headquartered company.

“During the turnaround, additional scopes of work were identified and a decision made to extend maintenance to complete these scopes ahead of restart,” Shell added.

Feed gas

For the Shell project, the Concerto gas field and the nearby Prelude field provide the feed gas for the LNG and the new Crux field is also being developed.

The “Prelude” joint venture is owned 67.5 percent by Shell and 17.5 percent by Inpex Corp. of Japan, operator of the Australian Ichthys project from where the carrier the “Symphonic Breeze” has lifted many cargoes for Japan.

The Inpex Ichthys plant is located at Bayden Point in the Northern Territory of Australia, close to the Darwin LNG plant operated by Santos.

The Santos facility is seeking to bring on stream more feed gas from the Barossa gas project.

A further 10 percent of “Prelude” is held by the South Korean LNG buyer Korea Gas Corp. and 5 percent by CPC Corp. of Taiwan.