Incident Shows "Urgent Need" for LNG Bunkering Policies

The group said an incident involving the Bergensfjord highlights the need for guidelines

Citing a recent incident in Norway that highlighted the "urgent need" for unified policy on the safe use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkers, the Society for Gas as a Marine Fuel (SGMF) said in an emailed statement that it plans to begin issuing guidelines this summer.

The society held its second technical committee meeting in June, just as the media was reporting a leak of LNG that had occurred the previous month during the bunkering of an LNG-powered cruise ferry in Norway.

The incident, on May 9 in Risavika, involved the leak of 100 kiligrams of LNG from a hose connection in the bunkering room of Fjord Line's Bergensfjord, according to industry news site TradeWinds.

SGMF has released interim "flange to flange" guidelines covering shore, truck, and barge bunkering to its memberships for final comments and plans to publish the final version by the end of the summer.

The organization also plans to release a publication on safe working distances in the fall, addressing different approaches to creating a safety zone around LNG bunkering operations.

"A deterministic or probabilistic approach can lead to wildly different distances for the same operation and these results can be manipulated to allow dangerously close proximity of operations," SGMF said.

"There are pros and cons to each method of course however the policy from this organisation is going to be one of safety first and this guide will inevitably be a table of exclusion zones depending amongst others upon volume, manifold size, transfer rate, type of transfer to name but a few."

The group is also planning guidelines on LNG quality and quantity for release in the winter and a publication on training and competence in the spring of 2015.

In addition, SGMF plans to address how LNG bunkers should be approached in a salvage scenario, and a work group made up of salvors and SGMF members plans to release relevant guidelines next year.

Other topics planned for consideration in the future include risk assessement, methane slip, efficiency, dry break and emergency release couplings, LNG availability, air quality issues, emergency procedures, and "well to wake" costs.

SGMF is made up of representatives from shipping lines, LNG companies, ports, and others in the industry.