13 October 2023 (Lloyd's List) - TRELLEBORG marine and infrastructure president Richard Hepworth tells Lloyd’s List that, from a shipping industry perspective, LNG is “likely to remain the primary transported gas for the foreseeable future”.
And its rising significance as a shipping fuel as well as the development of new zero-carbon fuel production plants will also mean traditional energy trading routes will be altered and, as such, infrastructure needs to keep up.
Backed by Trelleborg’s nearly 50 years of experience as a solutions provider to the LNG industry, Hepworth notes: “We are seeing global LNG demand shifting geographically, amid a new, dynamic period of regional volatility driven by competing economic, environmental and political agendas.”
Meanwhile, although there are promising signs as the industry debates the use of the emerging alternative fuels, he believes it is too early to see which of them will be shipped in large enough volumes that they would be significant from a maritime transport perspective.
“However, what is certain is that, as green molecule plants emerge in new hubs such as Northern Australia, Chile, and Morocco, for example, traditional oil and gas-driven trading routes will alter,” Hepworth adds.
Another part of the gas market that is proving interesting is the rising role carbon capture is playing in the industry’s decarbonisation efforts.
“We are seeing the increasing development of carbon capture, both in producing new green fuels and on board vessels, starting to play a more pivotal role in shipping’s decarbonisation; this looks set to continue and carbon capture utilisation and storage will be a new market involving marine shipping of liquefied carbon dioxide,” says Hepworth.
Trelleborg is right in the thick of things, providing ship-shore link solutions for the Northern Lights project, one of the first large-scale projects to be developed.
Hepworth believes there are ample opportunities for the maritime sector to take advantage of this trend.
“Even if the necessary levels of underground storage are achieved through land-based facilities, there are still maritime opportunities in providing collection services to transport localised LCO2 parcels to their storage locations,” he says, pointing to Petronas’ recently announced collaboration with MOL and MISC to invest in developing LCO2 carriers as an example.
The new fuels debate notwithstanding, the scenario that is clearly emerging suggests that the shipping industry will want to have access to every segment of the gas supply chain, regardless of which turns out to be dominant.
“A stable and reputable supply of gas is a must, and in the future, this will also involve more precise traceability and certification of the environmental impact on the process behind the fuel’s origin,” Hepworth explains.
“From Trelleborg’s perspective, we believe that it is important that we develop innovations that enable the LNG industry to work more flexibly to reflect ongoing trade dynamics, ensuring systems and solutions can be easily adapted to pivot towards emerging energy trends,” he says.
For example, he says: “We have seen that alternate fuelling is really pushing the market for LNG bunker vessels.”
With lessons learnt from servicing the first wave of LNG-fuel vessels, these are now becoming more efficient, with more effective sizing and new onboard equipment layouts on hull forms.
This is leading to the development of specialised LNG bunker vessels in their own right with capacities of up to of 8,000 cu m to 12,000 cu m to meet the various requirements, and not just the 2,000 cu m to 4,000 cu m small LNG carriers that were used for bunkering previously.
In all this, it is important to ensure that the industry has the right infrastructure to support these developments. And these need to be holistically developed rather than on a piecemeal ad-hoc basis.
“The LNG industry demands integrated solutions rather than an array of individual, piecemeal products, so our primary focus at Trelleborg is engineering LNG solutions that offer configurability, compatibility, and flexibility,” says Hepworth.
For example, the company has developed its GEN3 SSL/USL hybrid systems to cater to the needs of the LNG bunkering segment, and its planned new plant in Vietnam will complement its China production facilities in helping to meet expected increased demand.
With LNG being shipped in newer trades and being used in more ways in more locations, the requirement for standardisation of interfaces and solutions is growing.
Trelleborg’s Universal Safety Link addresses the increasing demands of LNG small-scale transfer, bunkering and fuelling application spaces.
The role of regulators and collaboration among all parties is also important, Hepworth highlights.
“As the pace of innovation outstrips regulation, it is important that energy companies, engineers, manufacturers and technology developers collaborate to find consistent, compatible ways of working. This will enable agile, symbiotic infrastructure to support the evolution of the LNG industry and ensure solutions are developed with the foresight to pivot or adapt as alternative fuels gain traction,” he concludes.
