Giant Ore/Coal Carrier Design Completed

At an event in Singapore, the ten-company ‘Green Corridor Joint Industry Project’ announced completion of the design of a LNG-fuelled ship to transport iron ore and coal on the Australia-to-China route.

A 210,000 deadweight (dwt) ‘Newcastlemax’ design was approved in principle in June 2017 (banner photo, courtesy DNV GL).

That design has been scaled up in the 15 months since to a dual-fuel 260,000 dwt dedicated ‘very large ore carrier’ (VLOC) design based on the same economical and technical principles.

Eight partners originally involved in the project – including miners BHP and Rio Tinto - were joined by China Merchant Energy Shipping, and Shell Eastern Petroleum - in that later phase.

Woodside and Shell advised on LNG bunkering possibilities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region and the related supply-chain costs. Ship classification firm DNV GL said September 19 that, due to the rapid rise in crude oil prices over the past year, the price of low-sulphur marine fuel is now 50% higher than when economics were analysed in early 2017.

Woodside COO Meg O'Neill said "This collaborative project has demonstrated that there is a cleaner way to ship Australia's largest export commodities to market using LNG as a marine fuel."

In October 2016, the UN's International Maritime Organisation set 2020 as the year of implementation of its 0.5% global cap on sulphur content in marine fuels. This is accelerating the uptake of LNG as a bunker fuel, and extending its use from simply short-sea routes in northern Europe and north America, to long-haul shipping routes in Asia involving containerships and very large bulk carriers.

Seaborne trade to rise out to 2050, but coal will decline

A recent forecast by DNV GL forecast that the volume of coal shipped will gradually decline out to 2050 as Asia's markets opt to use more gas instead, while tonnages of containers and LNG cargoes will rise.

Its 2018 ‘Maritime Forecast to 2050’ forecast that overall seaborne trade will 11.13 billion metric tons in 2016, through 15.46bn mt in 2030 to 16.08bn mt in 2040, before it levels off to 15.73bn mt in 2050. The largest relative growth by cargo-type is for gas/LNG and containerships, both growing about 120% between 2016 and 2050.

For gas/LNG, it sees trade increasing from 360mn mt in 2016, through 640mn mt in 2030 and 770mn mt in 2040, reaching 790mn mt in 2050.

For containers too - where LNG as a ship's fuel is gaining favour due to its low emissions – trade is forecast to rise from 1.73bn mt in 2016 to 2.85bn mt in 2030, 3.4bn mt in 2040 and 3.74bn mt in 2050.

Overall bulk trade will rise by 41% between 2016 (4.89bn mt) and 2050 (6.91bn mt), but the increase in non-coal volume will be offset by “eventual reductions” in coal volumes transported.

For more on that study, see p47 of the latest NGW Magazine, Vol.3, Issue 17, published September 17.