Page 47: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2016)

46-inch premium bridge

Ergonomics on a whole new scale (Photo: William Stoichevski)

Hard Times: LNG as a fuel has been good for charterers, not ship owners.

“the duck”, part of the MMC Technology Group) of- fers a battery hybridization “patch” for high-power, peak-shaving hydraulic crane operations and a ship’s power system hybridization conversion to connect batteries to a ship’s grid, whether AC or DC. All here agree, battery fuel savings are great, and so easy con- version is needed.

This type of hybridization is likely as much as these ship owners are likely to be willing to afford for the next year. They’re weary of pricy conversions. They’re also concerned about LNG bunker price stability and having to also watch oil and natural gas prices. This writer long ago wrote of LNG markets’ increased re- gionalization. Ulstein sees “a lot of disinformation out there” on oil prices that affect demand for shipping and, potentially, the cost of LNG bunkering.

The authorities, meanwhile, are in? uenced by that

EU-funded Danish study on LNG infrastructure proj- ects in Northern Europe. A key tenant of the study is that LNG-? lling station survival will depend on how local LNG bunker pricing becomes. “Many spot char- ters don’t even cover crew costs,” one ship owner com- plains, and they can’t take those specialized vessels out of their European LNG-bunkering station comfort zones. In the great beyond, it’s up to bunker-delivery ships, and they’re still servicing the major shipping lanes.

Resistance

The IMO, the EU and national planners simply ex- acerbate the confusion for ship owners who have paid the expense of an LNG engine: “LNG can be replaced by bio-LNG or LBG (Lique? ed Bio Gas) without any impact on maintenance. Diesel can be replaced by biodiesel, hydrotreated vegetable oil, pure plant oil or possibly pyrolysis liquid, but these fuels may require engine adaptations and increase maintenance,” another part of those studies say.

In the Danish report, offshore owners “resistance” (actual word used) to LNG was measured in percent- ages — offshore and workboats, “5 percent”; yachts, “10 percent” — and blamed on “uncertain fuel avail- www.jrc.am ability”; infrastructure for bunkering and the cost of new technology. They might have added “income un- certainty” and “returns on investment”.

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