• 27 Mar 2019

On March 18, at the Damen shipyard in Yichang, China, a ceremony was held to mark the start of  cutting steel of  first LNG short-range LNG bunker ship to be built on behalf of the Estonian company Eesti Gaas.

The bunker vessel project, co-financed by the European Union through the CEF (Connecting Europe Facility) tool, was developed to meet the ICE Class 1 ° certification requirements, as an icebreaker, which will allow it to operate during all periods of the year in the Gulf of Finland and in the Northern Baltic Sea.

The ship will be equipped with a LNG tank of 6,000 cubic meters of capacity and machinery for port-to-ship and ship-to-ship fuel transfer services. Its propulsion system will be a “dual fuel” type, using the so-called Boil Off gas (BOG) of liquid methane, which would tend to increase the pressure in the LNG tank by vaporizing.

Kalev Reiljan, member of the Board of Directors of Eesti Gaas, commented on the ceremony:

"After carrying out more than 1,500 LNG supplies from truck to ship serving ferries such as Tallink's Megastar, today Eesti Gaas begins to move towards the offshore, offering new mobile solutions for future LNG supplies to our customers."

Damen Shipyards Group operates 36 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 12,000 people worldwide. Damen has built more than 6,500 vessels, of which 176 vessels were delivered in 2018.

Source: Damen