LNG

A wholly owned subsidiary of US energy engineers McDermott has been awarded a significant contract by the Marsa liquefied natural gas project in the Sultanate of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula for storage and associated piping.

McDermott, based in Houston, Texas, has confirmed that its subsidiary CB&I will build a full containment concrete LNG storage tank at the Marsa project site at Oman's Port of Sohar.

French major TotalEnergies is going ahead with a large investment in the Marsa LNG project to serve as the first LNG bunkering hub in the Middle East.

The joint venture between TotalEnergies and Oman National Oil Company will build a liquefaction plant with 1 million tonnes per annum of output.

Feed-gas will come from Oman’s Mabrouk North-East field in the onshore Block 10 area.

Contractors

The main engineering, procurement and construction contracts have been awarded to France’s Technip Energies for the LNG plant and to CB&I for the 165,000 cubic metres capacity LNG storage tank.

The LNG is primarily intended to serve the marine fuel market in the Arabian Gulf region while LNG quantities not sold as bunker fuel will be off-taken by TotalEnergies and the Omani partner.

In addition to the storage tanks contract, CB&I will provide turnkey EPC services for the tank and associated piping.

Project delivery will be executed in Oman, where CB&I has been continually present since 1968, with support from CB&I's Dubai office.

“Through this project, CB&I will contribute to the construction of one of the lowest GHG emissions intensity LNG plants ever built,” said Cesar Canals, President and Chief Executive of CB&I.

“It supports our ambition to build storage for projects that will help provide reliable energy to markets,” Canals explained.

“It will also pave the way for similar storage opportunities in the future and continues our long history of execution excellence in the Middle East, specifically Oman,” he added.

Work is expected to commence with construction activities in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The overall Marsa bunkering fuel projects is targeted for completion in 2028.

French major TotalEnergies has launched its first LNG bunkering operation for containerships at the West Mediterranean Port of Marseille Fos with an LNG-powered 15,000 twenty-foot units (TEU) containership re-fuelled.

The “CMA CGM Bali” operates on the Asia-to-South Europe route for Marseille-based shipping line CMA CGM.

“The containership was refuelled by the bunkering vessel ‘Gas Vitality’, which has 6,000 cubic metres of capacity operated a ship-to-ship transfer alongside the Eurofos container terminal, while the containership carried out cargo operations simultaneously,” explained TotalEnergies.

The “Gas Vitality” is the second LNG bunker vessel chartered by TotalEnergies from the owner, Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines.

“This entire operation underlines a solid collaborative teamwork across the French maritime industry including the involvement of local port authorities to enable the vessels’ safe operatorship, and the commitments of all the parties to support the growing role of LNG,” said Jérôme Leprince-Ringuet, Vice-President at ToatlEnergies Marine Fuels.

“TotalEnergies is delighted to successfully complete Marseille’s first LNG bunkering operation of a containership,” added Leprince-Ringuet.

“Her deployment underscores the company’s commitment to support the French port’s ambition to be an LNG bunkering hub for the
Mediterranean region,” stated the executive.

TotalEnergies has actively invested in LNG infrastructure, critical to support its shipping customers’ uptake of LNG as a marine fuel.

The company has been operating an even larger bunkering vessel, the 18,600 cubic metres capacity “Gas Agility” since November 2020 at the Dutch Port of Rotterdam.

It was at Rotterdam that the “Gas Agility” completed the first LNG bunkering operation of the “CMA CGM Jacques Saade”, the largest dual-fuel LNG-powered containership in the world.

“TotalEnergies will also commence operations of a third LNG bunker vessel to serve Singapore,” it noted.

“The company was awarded an LNG bunker supplier licence for a five-year term starting on January 1st, 2022,” it added.

In the global LNG market TotalEnergies is the world's second-largest publicly traded player and will have a global portfolio of nearly 50 million tonnes per annum from after 2025.

The Paris-based company has stakes in 10 LNG liquefaction and export plants worldwide in Angola, Australia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the US, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Russia and Qatar.

Grupo HAM of Spain, the fuel infrastructure company with a station network, has opened a new LNG filling station in the Spanish capital Madrid, taking its number of stations to 80 in Europe and South America.

Ham said the LNG fuel facility was located at the Transportes Carrasco facilities at Velilla de San Antonio at the M-208, one of the main roads in Madrid.

The HAM Carrasco station has been designed and built by the HAM Group and Transportes Carrasco for LNG for road transport, especially trucks.

The new service station has a 80 cubic metres tank of 18bar pressure, with an LNG dispenser for trucks and heavy vehicles, which can be freely accessed 24/7 and throughout the year.

“With the opening of the new HAM Carrasco gas station, our customers can refuel in an extensive network, in continuous expansion, made up of 80 LNG and compressed natural gas stations, which allow them to circulate on the main national and European routes,” said HAM

The company noted that an average truck filling up with LNG is able to travel distances of up to 1,600 kilometres without the need to refuel.

“At HAM Group we continue working together with our subsidiaries to develop new projects and continue to expand our network of LNG and CNG service stations in Spain and the rest of Europe,” it added.

HAM's network of LNG and CNG stations comprises 33 in Spain, 16 in Italy, 12 in the Netherlands, nine in Belgium, eight in France and one each in Chile and Peru.

In its most recent South American opening HAM partnered with Peruvian firm Limagas to build the first LNG and CNG station in Peru, an LNG exporting nation.

The station is on one of the main avenues of the city of Cuzco, located in the Peruvian Andes.

The Cuzco CGN-LNG gas station is the first of three planned natural gas stations in Peru, including a second station in Cuzco and another to be opened at Quillabamba during 2021.

French shipping line CMA CGM has set a world record for the number of full containers loaded on a single vessel, the first Ultra Large LNG-powered container ship, the “CMA CGM Jacques Saadé”, on departure from Singapore on its maiden voyage with 20,723 containers.

HAM Group of Spain has designed and manufactured a mobile natural gas fuel station in Calais for international truck transport between the French Channel port and the UK as its network grows to over 70 stations.

The liquefied natural gas import terminal at Dunkirk on the French Channel Coast has opened its truck-loading bay as small-scale LNG and fuel usage increases in Europe.

“Ship owners and haulage companies as well as remote industry increasingly choose LNG as alternative low emission fuel. Their supply can now be sourced from the Dunkirk LNG terminal,” said the French Dunkerque LNG operating company .

Following its commercial entry into service, the newly commissioned truck-loading bay at the Dunkirk terminal offers a loading capacity of 3,000 slots per year.

The Dunkirk import facility is owned and operated by Dunkerque LNG, a company 61 percent held by a consortium including Belgian gas infrastructure group Fluxys, as well as funds such as AXA Investment Managers on behalf of its clients and France’s Crédit Agricole Assurances.

A further 39 percent is owned by a consortium of South Korean investors led by IPM Group in cooperation with Samsung Asset Management.

Juan Vazquez, Chief Executive of Dunkerque LNG, said he was delighted with the start-up of services for the trucking industry.

“This project has successfully come to fruition through our collaboration with the Port of Dunkirk, one of our main partners in the development of this new service,” explained Vazquez.

“With a capacity of almost 2,000 loading slots available between now and the end of the year, our first bay is ready to welcome customers,” stated the CEO.

The company said the service was straightforward and trucking customers can book loading slots online 24/7.

“After online training, drivers can fully autonomously load LNG in just one hour and 30 minutes thanks to a flow rate of 50 cubic metres per hour,” said Dunkerque LNG.

“The increasing demand for cleaner energy in maritime and road transport as well as in the industrial sector has brought LNG to the forefront as an attractive alternative due to its low emission profile,” added the company.

The terminal is located alongside Dunkirk's Western Harbour and began importing cargoes in 2016.

The jetty is large enough to enable the unloading and reloading of the largest LNG carriers up to 266,000 cubic metres capacity and it has three tanks. each with 200,000 cubic metres of storage.

Gaztransport and Technigaz (GTT), the Paris-based technology firm for designs of systems for the maritime transportation and storage of liquefied natural gas, has hired French high-flier Eric Dehouck for the newly-created post of Deputy Chief Executive.

MSC Cruises, the Swiss-based cruise ship operator, said it signed an agreement with French shipyard Chantiers de l’Atlantique for its third and fourth LNG-powered vessels.

The French Mediterranean port of Marseille-Fos, the nation’s largest trading port, is developing plans for the construction of liquefied natural gas bunkering infrastructure to boost the regional use of LNG as a maritime fuel and reduce the impact of emissions.