LNG

Feb 24 (LNGJ) - US company Eagle LNG marked a series of firsts when it fueled the 7,500-car carrier “SIEM Aristotle” from its Talleyrand LNG Bunker Station at the Jacksonville Port Authority (Jaxport) in Jacksonville, Florida. The “SIEM Aristotle” is the first deep-sea pure car, truck carrier (PCTC) equipped with dual-fuel engines designed to operate on LNG and marine gas oil.

   “It was the first time ‘SIEM Aristotle’ had been refueled from a landside bunkering facility and the first ship that Eagle LNG had refueled of that size from the bunkering station,” said Eagle. The “SIEM Aristotle” and sister ship “SIEM Confucius” are chartered from Norway’s SIEM Shipping to Volkswagen to transport automobiles from the northwest German port of Emden to the US East and Gulf Coasts and Mexico.

The American Bureau of Shipping, the US classification society, has held its annual meeting of members in Houston and recalled a past year of success in enacting ship safety and technical development, including in the LNG and gas carriers sphere.

The 18,000 deadweight-ton “Fure Ven”, a dual-fuel products tanker owned and operated by Furetank Rederi AB of Sweden, has become the first non-US-flagged vessel to bunker LNG at a US port.

Eagle LNG Partners, the US leader in small-scale LNG development in Florida and elsewhere, supplied the fuel to the Swedish-flagged “Fure Ven” at its terminal and fuel station at Jacksonville in Florida.

“This milestone paves the way for more international trading vessels to bunker at Jacksonville Port Authority (Jaxport), marking the latest tangible demonstration of LNG as a safe and reliable fuel solution,” said Eagle.

“It also builds confidence in the case for LNG to help the shipping industry meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations, while still generating substantial cost savings,” added the US company.

Furetank is owned by the Höglund family and is a founding partner of the Scandinavian commercial joint venture, the Gothia Tankers Alliance, comprising 32 vessels from various small shipping lines in sizes of 6,000 dwt to 37,000 dwt.

For the US bunkering operation, the vessel transited the St. Johns River and called at the Talleyrand Marine Terminal, which also serves the 7dUS shipping line, Crowley Maritime Corp.

“Eagle LNG Partners safely transferred 225 metric tonnes of LNG to the vessel from their on-site storage facility, with the bunkering taking less than seven hours to complete,” said the US firm.

“The tanker was laden with renewable diesel cargo for Preem, the largest petroleum and biofuels company headquartered in Sweden,” it added.

GAC Group, a global provider of logistics and marine services with Swedish heritage, assisted all parties by broking the LNG fuel and providing ship agency services to the vessel during her voyage across the Atlantic.

It was the first time that GAC’s Bunker Fuels division had secured a deal to supply LNG as a marine fuel.

The “Fure Ven” is one of Furetank’s V-Series, a new generation of product and chemical tankers introduced in 2018, which leverage innovative design features and LNG to deliver a fuel reduction of approximately 40 percent.

Furetank said these climate-smart vessels have also achieved substantial reductions in emissions.

“As early as 2014, Furetank decided to convert one of our vessels to LNG propulsion,” explained Lars Höglund, Chief Executive of Furetank.

“We note with pleasure that LNG bunkering is becoming available in more and more places, not least the US, and we are confident that investing in the V-series particularly contributes to a cleaner environment worldwide,” he added.

Sean Lalani, President of Eagle LNG, said his company was delighted to have been part of the re-fueling.

“As a pioneer in LNG bunkering and a global leader in small-scale LNG, the team at Eagle LNG is proud to have partnered with the trailblazers at Furetank and GAC, along with numerous crucial stakeholders including JAXPORT, Crowley Maritime and the US Coast Guard, to safely accomplish this first-ever LNG bunkering in the US of a non-US flagged vessel,” explained Sean Lalani

“It is only fitting that this first bunkering happens in Jacksonville where JAXPORT, local officials, and the community have embraced the shipping industry’s transition to the more sustainable, affordable LNG,” he stated.

Eagle LNG also praised the “pioneering spirit” of its partners at Crowley Maritime, with whom it has completed over 100 bunkerings in North Florida.

“We look forward to utilizing our experience and assets to bunker more international vessels from this facility and our future operations in the Caribbean Basin in the coming months and years,” Lalani concluded.

Siem Industries, the company run by Norwegian Kristian Siem and whose interests include shipping and offshore oil and gas engineering and services through the Subsea 7 company and Siem Offshore Inc., has attended the naming ceremony for its two LNG-powered car carriers at the Chinese Xiamen Shipbuilding yard in southeastern Fujian province.

Sea-LNG, a global coalition of energy and shipping companies and other sector participants backing the increased use of liquefied natural gas as a maritime fuel, has signed up US LNG equipment-maker Chart Industries as the newest member.

Sea-LNG, a global coalition of energy and shipping companies backing the increased use of liquefied natural gas as a maritime fuel, has signed up its first US port as a member and its second in North America after Vancouver in Canada.