Spanish Shipowner Orders More LNG Ferries

Spanish shipowner Balearia has ordered two new ships, taking the number of large ferries it will power with LNG by 2019 to four.

Its latest order worth €200mn, placed this week with Italian shipyard Cantiere Navale Visentini, is for two dual-fuel ferries each with capacity for 810 people, 150 cars, plus 2,180 linear meters of cargo.

Balearia already last year ordered its first purpose-built LNG-fuelled roll-on roll-off passenger ferry from Spain’s LaNaval shipyard, which is due for delivery in the Mediterranean in 2019.

The company said February 1 its three newbuild vessels -- plus the Abel Matutes ferry which was retrofitted by adding an LNG storage tank and an auxiliary Rolls-Royce gas-fired engine to enable LNG to be used as a fuel when in or near port -- make it a pioneer of LNG as a bunker fuel.

Abel Matutes was fuelled with LNG on January 29 at Barcelona, the first time the port had bunkered a ship with LNG. The ship however will continue for now to burn heavy fuel oil on the open sea on its routes between Barcelona and the Balearic islands.

Balearia's Abel Matutes ferry being bunkered with LNG by truck on January 29 2017 at Barcelona (Photo credit: Balearia)

Mark Smedley