Pride is first Norwegian Cruise Lines ship with scrubbers

OCTOBER 29, 2013 — The first Norwegian Cruise Line (NASDAQ: NCLH) ship to be equipped with exhaust gas scrubbers will be its U.S.-flag Pride of America, which is Hawaii (and thus North American ECA) based. The ship is now in the final phases of installation of its fuel scrubbers. Meantime, the two 4,200 berth Breakaway-class cruise ships, Norwegian Escape and Norwegian Bliss, which are under construction by German shipbuilder Meyer Werft, will also be equipped with fuel scrubbers.

Cruise lines have a strong motivation to adopt scrubber technology to meet ECA regulations.
According to its third quarter results, Norwegian Cruise Line says that it expects full year 2013 fuel consumption to reach 455,000 metric tons and that it will pay $680 per metric ton in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter,  fuel price, net of hedges, increased 2.4% to $695 per metric ton compared to $679 in 2012.

Check out the price of MDO and MGO, via sites like Wilhelmsen Marine Fuels, and the attraction of scrubbers is self explanatory!

In July, Norwegian Cruise Line said that the Breakaway Plus newbuilds  would be the first in the cruise industry to feature innovative scrubber technology developed by Green Tech Marine (GTM), which is also providing the Pride of America scrubbers.

Green Tech Marine will provide five scrubbers per ship for the Breakaway Plus engines which range from 14.4 to 16.8 megawatts. The cruise line says these installations will be the largest scrubber plants in the world with a total engine power of 76.8 megawatts.

The GTM-R scrubbers are compact, making it possible for the builds to avoid the loss of cabin space or other service areas. GTM uses one smaller scrubber for each engine instead of a large multi inlet scrubber serving several engines, and the scrubber also replaces the silencer, which is very suitable for cruise ships. The GTM-R scrubbers hold all necessary certificates to ensure these vessels are compliant with the 0.1% sulfur limit in Emission Control Areas (ECA) beginning in 2015.