LNG

The American Bureau of Shipping, the US maritime classification society, and Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines have signed an accord to collaborate on up to 14 new gas carriers expected to transport cargoes from the US to North Asia as well as other global markets.

Mitsui OSK Lines, the Japanese shipping company whose operated fleet includes almost 100 LNG carriers, said that in an uncertain political and economic environment in the year ahead, one issue that would have a notable impact on the global shipping industry is the enforcement of new sulfur-oxide emissions regulations in January 2020.

Turkish Petroleum Pipeline Corp. (Botas) said one of the world's biggest ship-to-ship liquified natural gas transfers and regasfication operations was taking place in the Mediterranean port of Dortyol.

The operation involves the 210,100 cubic metres capacity Qatari Q-Flex carrier “Al Sadd” and the Japanese-owned “MOL FSRU Challenger”, the world’s largest floating storage and regasification unit with capacity of 263,000 cubic metres.

Turkey currently has four import facilities, two FSRUs and two onshore terminals.

The regional director of Botas utilities, Mehmet Tecimen, said that the two ships would take two days to conduct the transfer operation in which LNG will be regasified and injected into Turkey's natural gas pipeline system.

“This Botas chartered FSRU anchored in Dortyol is the largest FSRU in the world at 345 meters in length,” said Tecimen.

He noted that the vessel was commissioned at Dortyol port in February 2018 and this was its largest transfer to date.

The “MOL FSRU Challenger” has a regasification discharge capacity of 540 million cubic metres per day.

Botas signed a deal in September 2017 to receive 1.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG from Qatargas over a period of three years.

Turkey's first FSRU operations began in December 2016 in Aliaga port near Izmir to boost the nation’s LNG supplies.

Botas also operates Turkey’s oldest onshore import terminal, the Marmara Ereglisi facility, that has been on line since 1994.

There is a second onshore terminal owned by Turkish company EgeGaz and on line since 2006, also near Izmir, and a second FSRU, the “Neptune”, operating since December 2016 in the Aliaga industrial zone.

The Turkish government has said it was considering a fifth LNG import facility near Saros Bay on the Gallipoli peninsula.

The American Bureau of Shipping, the US maritime classification society, said it was chosen by Petroleum Pipeline Corp. of Turkey to class a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) ordered in South Korea.