Austria's 1st LNG Filling Station Opened

Austrian gas storage operator RAG has opened the country’s first LNG filling station for vehicles, it said September 26. 

RAG and Italian truck-maker Iveco jointly opened the station at Ennshafen, which can store up to 12 metric tons of LNG and was built in a few weeks.

RAG has been running LNG-fuelled Iveco Stralis trucks since this April in Austria, and says hauliers now run over 2,000 such trucks on Europe’s roads.

Some of the LNG supplied at Ennshafen comes from RAG-operated gas storage facilities. That gas is liquefied at RAG’s own unit at nearby Gampern in Upper Austria which can currently produce about 2 tons a day – enough to fuel 10-15 LNG-powered trucks daily at Ennshafen. Austrian RAG, not to be confused with a similarly-named German coal miner, also is also a modest upstream oil and gas producer in Austria.

Werner Auer, managing director of the port of Ennshafen, hinted that LNG may later be supplied to barges on the River Danube which the port serves.

Truck makers operated cartel, said EC

Truck manufacturers are building lower-emission LNG-fueled vehicles. However on September 27 the European Commission said that six had operated a cartel in relation to truck pricing and the passing on of costs associated with new technologies to meet stricter emission rules, and it fined Swedish state-run Scania €880.5mn for its involvement with the five others. The commission reached a settlement with the other five in July 2016  -- Iveco, DAF, Daimler, MAN and Volvo/Renault -- whereby they were fined a total of almost €2.93bn. Scania which also makes LNG-fueled trucks had refused to settle last year which explains the deferred fine. 

Iveco's fine as part of the 2016 settlement was €494.6mn.

Mark Smedley