The Enagás subsidiary, Scale Gas, and the Norwegian shipowner Knutsen have inaugurated this Thursday the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply ship built in Spain, in a shipyard in Gijón, and which will have its headquarters in the Port of Barcelona.
The ship, a Haugesund Knutsen model, is a mobile refueling station: it will provide LNG to those ships that use it as fuel -350 in the world- and that dock in Barcelona or pass through it, since the ship will be permanently in the Catalan capital. “Today, the Port of Barcelona joins a small club of ports that have this service,” declared the CEO of Enagás, Arturo Gonzalo, at the inauguration of the vessel this Thursday at the Enagás regasification plant in Barcelona.
Gonzalo specified that as of today there are only 40 ships in the world that can carry out this refueling of LNG to other ships and that, in fact, not all of them are in service. The LNG that the Haugesund Knutsen loads on the ships will be the one that is stored in the Enagás regasification plant in the Port of Barcelona, ??which according to the Spanish energy company is the plant with the largest storage capacity in Europe for this fuel.
Sources from the Port assure that the start-up of this ship is a strategic operation to attract to Barcelona vessels that work with LNG as fuel and that today refuel in Mediterranean ports that do have a permanent service of LNG refueling.
Until now, this refueling was done in Barcelona, ??also with Enagás infrastructure, but not permanently but rather sporadically, a situation that changed with the start-up of the Haugesund Knutsen. The construction of the ship, carried out at the Armón Shipyard in Gijón, has received a contribution of 9 million euros from the European Commission.
Gonzalo has claimed that the Haugesund Knutsen will promote the use of LNG, which will mean a “step forward” in the decarbonisation of maritime transport.
LNG is a transition fuel, it is not completely clean but it is used while renewable fuels are being developed, and compared to traditional fuels it eliminates 100% of sulfur emissions, 80% of nitrogen oxide emissions and a 25% of those of CO2. “I am sure that Haugesund Knutsen will serve Barcelona for many years,” said Trygve Seglem, the founder and owner of Knutsen.
On behalf of Shell Spain, the company in charge of chartering the vessel, its president, Óscar Fernández, has claimed that “the beauty of LNG is that, while we look to the future, it allows us to act today and now.” The president of the Port of Barcelona, ??Lluís Salvadó, has described the inauguration of the ship as an “honor” for the infrastructure and has hoped that other milestones in improving air quality will come.
In addition to the ship, Enagás also announced this Thursday that it is starting up a small-scale natural gas refueling station. As explained by the CEO of the company, this movement seeks to expedite the transport of natural gas through the Mediterranean and the station will allow the loading of natural gas to ships that will transport it to Mediterranean ports near Barcelona where large gas freighters cannot dock, which they can do in Barcelona.
