Page 19: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 1971)

Newport News Ship

Licensed To Build

LNG Tankers

Newport News Shipbuilding, a

Tenneco company, and Gaz Trans- port, S.A., a French engineering firm with headquarters in Paris, announced the signing of a licens- ing agreement that will permit

Newport News to use Gaz Trans- port's system for constructing liquefied natural gas tankers. L.C.

Ackerman, president of Newport

News, and Audy Gilles, president of Gaz Transport, executed the agreement, which will provide a royalty payment to the French firm for each tanker built by New- port News that utilizes the system.

Mr. Ackerman said: "This li- censing agreement will permit us to accelerate our efforts to develop a market for building the new tankers that will be needed to satisfy the world's increasing ener- gy demands." He said the yard has no commitments at present for construction of the new tankers, but that "we are actively seeking construction contracts."

L.C. Ackerman, left, president and chief executive officer of Newport News Ship- building, a Tenneco Company, and Audy

Gilles, president of Gaz Transport, S.A., a

French engineering firm with headquarters in Paris, sign contract permitting Newport

News to use Gaz Transport's construction system for liquefied natural gas tankers.

The Gaz Transport system is unique to the French firm, Mr.

Gilles said. Ocean transportation of natural gas in liquefied form can he accomplished only at tem- peratures of 258 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). The method de- vised by Gaz Transport utilizes a thin membrane of special alloy steel containing 36 percent nickel which lines tanks insulated with specially constructed plywood box- es containing perlite. The two layers of boxes are built up as a wall following the inner hull of the tanker. A second membrane identical to the above membrane is placed between the two layers of boxes. The space between the inner and outer hulls is used for ballast.

The French firm has designed systems on two Swedish-built tankers, the Polar Alaska and the.

Arctic Tokyo, which serve Japa- nese natural gas demands from

Alaska's gas fields. In addition, eight LNG vessels from approxi- mately 1,412 to 4,237,872-cubic- foot capacity are under construc-

August1 1, 1971 tion in French shipyards using the

Gaz Transport membrane tech- nique.

Under terms of the licensing agreement, Mr. Gilles said the shipyard will pay a royalty based on the amount of membrane sur- faces exposed to the LNG. The royalties therefore will vary ac- cording to the size of the ship.

In addition, the license arrange- ment includes supervisory and con- sulting services during construc- tion, and testing of the completed system in the finished ship.

Natural gas, long burned off as a waste by-product in oil produc- tion, has come into world demand because it is clean burning. Its success has been widely demon- strated in Japan, where other fuel resources are scarce and the de- mand for energy is .high.

LNG ships, called cryogenic tankers, require a liquefaction fa- cility at the point of shipment and a regasification facility at the point of use. While the insulated tanks can maintain the liquefied natural gas at the proper subzero tempera- ture, some of the liquid at the top of the tank evaporates. This evaporation, called "boil-off," can be controlled so that the gas may be used in the ship's boilers for propulsion.

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