LNG

HAM Group of Spain, the developer of an expanding European LNG filling station network, plans to provide natural gas fuel on the Pan-American Highway spanning South America starting in Peru.

HAM has set up a joint venture with Peruvian company Limagas called Energía de Valor Ambietal (EVA) to begin providing more LNG and compressed natural gas (CNG) for trucks and automobiles in the region.

HAM already has a network of more than 140 LNG, CNG and biomethane service stations in Europe, mostly on the main Spanish transportation routes.

The HAM-Limagas venture plans to provide LNG an and CNG with proposals to open between 10 and 15 natural gas vehicle filling service stations before December 2025.

Supply points

“The first service stations that EVA will open will be located along the Pan-American Highway, a system that links almost all the countries of the American continent with its more than 17,800 kilometres (11,060 miles) of road,” they said.

“These LNG supply points will be located in Mala, Nazca and Arequipa,” they added, referring to major Peruvian cities near the coastal highway.

The Mala LNG service station will be operational first while it is expected that Nasca and Arequipa will be able to begin offering service during the second half of the year.

“With the creation of EVA ( in English, Energy of Environmental Value), HAM Group and Limagas reinforce their presence in Peru, developing an important growth strategy and taking advantage of the possibilities that Peru can become a benchmark in the Latin American vehicle energy field,” the companies stated.

Volvo trucks

HAM already has Peruvian operations. The Spanish company had earlier announced on May 7 2024 that advances had been made in its business in Peru with Volvo Peru delivering the first LNG tractors to HAM Criogénica Peru, the company’s own trucking company.

These were also the first LNG-fuelled trucks Volvo Peru had delivered on the South American continent.

These vehicles acquired by HAM Perú are characterized by having high pressure direct injection (HPDI), which plays an important role in sustainable solutions for the decarbonization of transportation.

HAM, which also has a widespread road haulage business in Spain, also recently expanded its Spanish network with a strategic filling station for transportation fleets travelling from Madrid to Barcelona.

HAM’s new Torre-Serona Lleida LNG mobile service station is located on the A2 Northeast Highway at KP 463.

Spanish build-out

The A2 Northeast highway is one of the main radial highways in Spain with significant trucking traffic fleets passing through Guadalajara, Zaragoza and Lérida.

HAM sets up mobile service stations in the EU designed and manufactured by HAM subsidiary company, Vakuum.

Its European gas stations are open 24/365 and they are monitored remotely while offering the possibility of contacting technical service and with advanced security systems to guarantee the rapid resolution of incidents during refuelling.

HAM recently inaugurated two other facilities in the Tarragona province of eastern Spain as it builds out its chain of filling stations on the A7 stretching from north of Barcelona to Cadiz in southwest Spain.

India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri has called on automobile makers and suppliers to ensure the availability of vehicles powered by liquefied natural gas as well as compressed natural gas on a pan-India basis.

Gasum, the state-owned Finnish company and the largest Nordic LNG supplier and developer, has opened a new natural gas filling station in Trondheim in Norway as it continues to build out the network linking towns, regions and nations with clean fuel outlets for vehicles.

Demark is ready to enter the liquefied natural fuel market with the opening before the end of 2021 of the nation’s first LNG filling station in the city of Padborg, one of Europe’s busiest transport hubs with over 7,000 trucks passing through each day in what is a key junction for the transport of goods between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.

The new station, which will be able to accommodate all types of trucks, will be located at Q8’s IDS station in Padborg, right next to the major Danish-German highway right on the border.

“Here at Q8, we have one clear goal for this project. We want to help our customers start a sustainable transition of their transportation,” said Gert Thomasen, Head of Fleet and International Diesel Service at Q8 Denmark.

“We are seeing a growing demand for sustainable solutions, and more companies now demand that their goods be transported using more sustainable energy sources, such as gas,” explained Thomasen.

“We want to enable our customers to get that transition going, and LNG is a highly relevant alternative for heavy transport, which can’t just be converted to electric overnight,” he stated.

The station in Padborg will be fully automatic, requiring no operator and the truck driver will be able to fill up his own tanks in just a few minutes.

The technical solution will be delivered in collaboration with the Dutch company LIQAL.

Bunkering and LNG fuel services company KC LNG, part of Denmark’s Makeen Energy, will deliver the station as a turnkey project, handling everything from project management to civil works and installation.

“The facility will also be delivered with an advanced online surveillance system that maximizes safety and user experience,” said a statement.

The companies developing the first Danish LNG filling station noted that around 30,000 diesel-powered trucks occupy the roads of Denmark every day, emitting significant amounts of carbon-dioxide.

“To steer the heavy road transport sector in a greener direction, it is, therefore, essential to transition to cleaner, more sustainable fuels,” they said.

“Therefore, Q8 has chosen to take the first step with this project, aiming to make it easier for North European freight companies to invest in cleaner technology,” they declared.

The LNG station in Padborg will be part of a European network as Q8’s IDS has 25 other European Union locations that also offer LNG.

China has pledged to improve its use of cleaner fuel in the transportation sector where more LNG will be used for shipping, trucking and other industries, while domestic Emission Control Areas are being expanded in line with International Maritime Organization regulations and the natural gas pipeline grid will be improved.

The lengthy list of current and future plans has been published in main state-controlled media under the heading “Sustainable Development of Transport in China”.

The report noted that the Chinese directives are backed by the most recent 19th Communist Party of China National Congress with goals for realizing more modernization through to 2035.

“The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee proposed that we should accelerate the effort to build China into a country with a strong transport system,” added the report.

China said it would be pursuing “green development” by promoting a cleaner and improved transport sector and would achieve real results in energy conservation and carbon reduction.

The report said there were now 400,000 buses and 430,000 trucks using new energy such as LNG, compressed natural gas and battery power and 180,000 natural gas and new fuel passenger vehicles such as hybrids. The country was planning to have more LNG-powered ships as part of its cleaner shipping policy.

China stated that it attached great importance to the prevention and control of transport pollution, and has issued a series of policy documents, including the “Implementation Plan on Domestic Emission Control Areas” in the waters of the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Sea Rim (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei).

It was also implementing the IMO’s “Global Marine Fuel Oil Sulfur Limits” brought in at the start of 2020.

“With its initial focus on the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River and the Bohai Sea, China has set the goal of controlling and reducing emissions of atmospheric pollutants including sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matters (PMs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from vessels and improving the air quality of coastal areas and inland river port cities,” stated the report.

At present, China said its EMAs have been further expanded along the coastal areas and the main streams of the Yangtze and Xijiang rivers, and stricter control standards have been proposed for the waters in Hainan.

The main EMAs outside China are in Northwest Europe and North America and with others planned in the Mediterranean by the nations of Southern Europe where the broader use of LNG fuel for shipping is being promoted and bunkering availability is improving.

China, the world’s second-largest LNG importer, also stated that it was building out its natural gas pipeline grid.

“A trunk network of gas pipelines is improving with the capacity to transmit gas from West to East China, from Sichuan to East China and from Shaanxi to Beijing, and to bring gas from offshore,” said the report.

The report revealed other tranport statistics such China’s national railway electrification rate having reached 71.9 percent.

About 14 percent of airport vehicles and facilities are run on new energy sources, substitute facilities for aircraft auxiliary power units (APUs) are in full use, and the numbers of postal vehicles run on new and clean energy such as electricity and gas are steadily increasing in key regions.

“More than 7,400 charging piles have been built and operated in 942 expressway service areas across the country, more than 5,800 sets of shore power facilities have been built at ports, covering over 7,200 berths, and container terminals at major ports along the Yangtze and coastlines have switched from oil to electricity for power,” it explained.

“The annual energy saved by green transport provinces and cities, green highways, green ports and other demonstration projects has exceeded 630,000 tonnes of coal equivalent,” added the report.

It added that coal logistics corridors are better configured and a railway corridor for energy and commodities transport running across the country has taken shape.

“China is engaged in an all-out effort to build a great modern socialist country. Transport will play a stronger part in leading economic and social development. China will implement the new development strategy and develop safe, convenient, efficient, green and economical transport to lay a solid foundation for modernization by 2035,” concluded the report.

Russian natural gas company Gazprom said more than 30,000 workers were on site to complete the Amur Gas Processing Plant, part of the “Power of Siberia” project already bringing pipeline gas to China and with an affiliated LNG liquefaction plant to fuel trucks carrying containers of liquid helium for export.

The Amur venture is more than 70 percent complete and Gazprom said a recruitment process for the GPP’s future full-time staff was underway.

“Other aspects of the project include the building of a small-scale liquefaction plant for LNG trucking,” said Gazprom.

The company said in its update report that the first two Amur processing lines would be on stream in 2021.

“Start-up and commissioning operations continue at the first two Amur gas trains and external thermal insulation is being installed on the core equipment,” added Gazprom.

“This is the final stage of preparations for load testing,” stated the company.

The construction of the Amur GPP is one of the largest infrastructure projects of Gazprom in Russia’s Far East.

During the 2020 navigation season, 50 pieces of large equipment weighing a total of some 8,000 tons were delivered by sea and river vessels to the Amur GPP’s wharf.

The GPP will receive heat and electricity from the Svobodny thermal power plant.

The construction of the power plant’s main building and structures is already finished. In December 2020, the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline started feeding gas to the TPP for the purpose of start-up and commissioning of the gas-using equipment.

The Amur plant will process multi-component natural gas received via the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline from the Yakutia and Irkutsk gas production centres,.

“Valuable components extracted in the course of processing will be used as feedstock for the petrochemical and other industries,” explained Gazprom.

The Amur GPP is being built near the town of and will have final design capacity to process 42 billion cubic metres of per annum of natural gas.

The GPP will include the world’s largest helium production facilities with an annual capacity of up to 60 million cubic metres.

The plant will have six production trains. While the first two lines will start in the coming year, the other four would be consecutively put in operation before the end of 2024.

In addition to natural gas and helium, the GPP’s commercial products will include ethane, propane, butane, and pentane-hexane fraction.

A Gazprom subsidiary called, Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk, is the project company for the Amur GPP. Construction management is being carried out by NIPIGAZ, part of the Sibur Group.

gazprom said a central link in the export system for commercial helium, one of the components that will be extracted at Amur, will be the Logistics Centre for servicing thermally-insulated containers.

“The Centre, which is being set up near the city of Vladivostok, will be the world’s largest hub for delivering liquid helium to the global market,” Gazprom explained.

At present, construction of the hub’s off-site facilities is finished, the core and auxiliary process equipment is installed, and electricity is now being supplied to the Logistics Centre.

“A natural gas liquefaction unit is currently being built with the aim of refueling trucks that will carry the containers,” said Gazprom

The pipeline gas supplies for China started operations in December 2019 via Gazprom’s “Power of Siberia” trunkline from the Chayandinskoye gas field.

In the year since the launch of “Power of Siberia”, Gazprom said a total of 3.84 Bcm had been supplied to China via the trunkline, which was less than the expected 5 Bcm.

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. have signed a 30-year supply agreement for Russian gas to be supplied via the eastern route amounting to 38 Bcm per annum once incremental increases had been met over a period of five years.

The United States will remain the world’s largest natural gas producer throughout the period through 2050, reaching 43 trillion cubic feet per annum, a nearly 50 percent increase from now with US shale-gas resources continuing to expand in the Appalachian region and in formations in and around Texas.

According to the International Energy Outlook 2019 just released by the US government, Middle East natural gas production increases 15 Tcf from 2018 to 2050, reaching 37 Tcf per annum in 2050, an increase of around 70 percent.

After 2030, countries in the Middle East increase production of low-cost, abundant hydrocarbon resources to meet growing demand worldwide.

“Natural gas production in Russia is forecast to increases about 40 percent during the projection period, reaching 34 Tcf in 2050 and most of the increase is exported to Asia and Europe,” said the US Outlook.

Canada also continues to produce relatively large amounts of natural gas per annum, reaching 6.8 Tcf in 2050, a nearly 20 percent increase from 2018.

World natural gas consumption increases more than 40 percent from 2018 to 2050, with growth in non-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries outpacing growth in the OECD, which groups the 36 wealthiest countries.

The US report said that global natural gas consumption increases by 2050 to a total of nearly 200 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu).

“Natural gas use accelerates the most in countries outside of the OECD to meet demand from increased industrial activity, natural gas-fired electricity generation and transportation fueled by LNG,” said the report.

“Natural gas consumption in non-OECD countries grows from about 70 quadrillion Btu in 2018 to 120 quadrillion Btu in 2050, a 70 percent increase,” stated the Outlook.

Despite strong growth in LNG trade, natural gas pipeline flows continue to account for most of the inter-regional natural gas trade during the projection period as pipeline infrastructure is further developed around the world.

“Non-OECD Europe and Eurasia (primarily Russia) remains the largest net exporter of natural gas in 2050, followed by the Middle East. During this time, OECD Europe increases its dependence on Russian pipeline natural gas, and non-OECD Asia imports a growing amount of LNG,” the Outlook explained.

“The Americas grow as a net exporter of natural gas, driven mostly by LNG shipments from the US to countries outside the region” stated the report.

“During this time, the non-OECD share of global natural gas consumption increases from about 51 percent to 61 percent,” it added.

“In OECD countries, natural gas consumption increases 17 percent between 2018 and 2050, reaching 78 quadrillion Btu,” said the report.

Most of this growth is forecast in the non-OECD industrial sector.

“In non-OECD countries, industrial sector natural gas consumption increases nearly 50 percent, from 32 quadrillion Btu in 2018 to 46 quadrillion Btu in 2050,” said the report.

“Chemical and primary metals manufacturing, as well as oil and natural gas extraction, account for most of the growing demand,” it added.

Natural gas consumption for electricity generation in non-OECD countries increases more than 60 percent, at 1.5 percent per year, accounting for part of the 2.2 percent per year growth in electricity demand in those countries.

Consumption of natural gas in the transportation sector remains the smallest of the end-use sectors throughout the projection period, and yet this sector shows relatively strong growth in non-OECD countries. Increases in demand are driven mostly by LNG use to move freight by truck and rail.