Gazprom commits to LNG as a marine fuel

DECEMBER 27, 2018 — The Board of Russian natural gas giant Gazprom has been reviewing the prospects of the LNG bunkering market and has instructed the company’s management to continue creating infrastructure for producing and marketing LNG as a bunker fuel.

Part of that infrastructure includes the 5,800 cu.m LNG bunkering tanker just ordered at Keppel Singmarine for charter to Gazpromneft Marine Bunker, the Gazprom Group’s single operator for selling LNG to end consumers in the bunkering market.

Today, notes Gazprom, only four vessels of this kind exist worldwide, along with eleven small-scale gas carriers some of which are fitted out for LNG bunkering.

Gazprom notes that the pending 2020 sulfur cap for marine fuel “is expected to significantly decrease the use of fuel oil and increase the consumption of LNG as a fuel meeting all of the environmental requirements set by MARPOL.”

Gazprom continues to build its LNG production, storage and shipment complex near the Portovaya compressor station in Vyborg. The complex is slated to come onstream in 2019 and Gazprom plans to use the plant’s output to, among other things, bunker marine vessels in Russia.

Gazprom is also exploring the possibilities of building plants in the area of the Black Sea and in Russia’s Far East.