UECC Receives 2nd LNG-Fuelled Car Carrier

Shipowner UECC, which operates giant car carriers, said November 30 that it formally took delivery the previous evening of Auto Energy at the Nacks shipyard in Nantong in China.

Auto Energy is the second of two Pure Car and Truck Carriers (PCTCs), built at the shipyard, that are the first in the world built to run either on LNG or oil products.

Participants at the November 29 ceremony were from the UECC's head office in Oslo and site office in Nantong, Lloyds, Nacks, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Wallenius, a co-owner of UECC; they represented the parties involved in the construction period for the vessel (Photo credit: UECC)

Sister ship Auto Eco arrived at Zeebrugge in Belgium on November 17 and was featured in the newly-published Natural Gas World magazine issue 8.

Like that first ship, Auto Energy is expected to be deployed in the Baltic and make 14-day round-trips there solely fuelled by LNG. Each of the ships has capacity to transport up to 4,000 cars. A naming ceremony for Auto Energy is expected to take place in late January 2017.

Mark Smedley