Page 8 - GLNG Week 46

GLNG AFRICA GLNG
South Africa’s DNG preparing to start LNG bunkering
PIPELINES & TRANSPORT
SOUTH African infrastructure company DNG Energy has said this week that it will start LNG bunkering operations in Algoa Bay in the second quarter of 2020. The move comes as the Interna- tional Maritime Organisation (IMO) prepares to bring new rules to reduce sulphur emissions from marine fuel from January 1, 2020. The introduction of the rules is expected to lead to a rise in the use of LNG as a marine fuel.
Algoa Bay is South Africa’s largest bunkering port, located on one of the world’s busiest trad- ing routes. The company said in a November 20 statement that 56,000 vessels per year transit the region, and that its plan will improve access to LNG bunkers for commercial vessels on this route.
DNG’s plans for Algoa Bay include a 160,000 cubic metre floating LNG (FLNG) storage facil- ity and an 8,000-tonne LNG bunker barge, con- struction of which was commissioned in South African Shipyards in 2018. The vessel is the larg- est by weight to be built on the African continent to date.
DNG is planning to harness Africa’s abun- dant natural gas reserves to use as feedstock for its bunkering operations.
“The shipping industry faces significant chal- lenges in meeting global sulphur regulations from 2020, as well as ambitious decarbonisation and wider sustainability targets towards 2050,” DNG’s founder and CEO, Aldworth Mbalati, said.
“It is increasingly evident that LNG as a marine fuel has an important role to play on this pathway,” he added. “As a major global maritime hub, the development of LNG bunkering infra- structure in Algoa Bay is therefore a natural step in expanding Africa’s LNG value chain, directly supporting the growth of LNG-fuelled shipping on multiple trade routes and delivering against the industry’s, as well as Africa’s, sustainability goals.”
DNG is investing over $5bn by 2020 in infra- structure programmes across South Africa, Nigeria and Mozambique as part of its wider LNG development strategy.™
AMERICAS
Tango LNG’s first commercial cargo sold to Petrobras
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
BRAZIL’S national oil company (NOC) Petro- bras has been identified as the buyer of the first commercial cargo of LNG lifted from Tango, a floating gas liquefaction plant anchored near Bahia Blanca.
Industry sources told Reuters last week that YPF, Argentina’s own NOC, had named Petro- bras as the winner of a tender for the LNG on November 6. As the top bidder, Petrobras won the right to buy 2.1tn British thermal units (about 41,500 tonnes) of LNG that had already been loaded onto a tanker at the Tango LNG facility.
The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Reuters noted, though, that YPF had finished transferring the LNG from Tango to Excalibur, an LNG tanker operated by Exceler- ate Energy, on October 26. Shipping data from Refinitiv show that the ship is now on the move, the news agency said.
YPF indicated earlier last week that the cargo would be exported to a customer somewhere in
the Atlantic Basin on a delivered-ex-ship (DES) basis. At the time, Reuters quoted an unnamed trade source as saying that the LNG was prob- ably headed for Europe or the Americas rather than a long-haul destination.
The trade source also noted that Tango LNG took about 40 days to load each full cargo. He went on to say that Tango LNG’s next shipment would be loaded onto Methane Kari Elin, a tanker owned by Gaslog LNG Services (Greece).
Argentina exported its first LNG cargo in June of this year, several months after taking delivery of a floating LNG (FLNG) unit from Exmar (Belgium). The vessel is processing gas from Vaca Muerta, a shale formation that con- tains substantial reserves of crude oil and natural gas.
Tango LNG, which can turn out 500,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG, is currently Argen- tina’s only gas liquefaction plant. YPF has said it wants to build another facility with a capacity of 5mn tpy.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 46 21•November•2019