Fuel of the future: LNG shipping innovations: Alaska to benefit from conversions and vessels.

• Author: Goforth, J. Pennelope
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

The acronym LNG rolls off the tongue smooth and sweet like H20 or PFD and engenders the same comforting feelings of something good. The developing technological advances that have grown up around the use of LNG (liquefied natural gas), touted as clean and green, are poised to move Alaska into a new era in shipping.

Three of Alaska's major shippers--TOTE, Crowley Maritime, and Matson--are following through with new LNG-powered vessels which are designed to ship LNG as well. LNG is poised to forever alter Alaska's energy economy much the same as salmon did in the nineteenth century and crude oil did in the twentieth.

As the up and coming decarbonized fuel of choice, LNG recently changed the "skyline" of the Port of Anchorage with a three-story high art deco looking round storage tank. Over the last decade LNG has quietly usurped crude oil as the cleaner burning fossil fuel of the future, not only for local Alaska use but also for export to Asian markets. So much so that Port MacKenzie is in active negotiations with a Japanese company to build an LNG processing plant. LNG is cheaper, lighter, and cleaner burning than current heavy diesel fuel. More prosaically, soon it will be a required fuel for ships built beginning in 2016 whose owners want to berth ships in European and North American ports and for vessels transiting Arctic waters.

The Center for Liquefied Natural Gas describes LNG as "natural gas that is cooled to -260 degrees Fahrenheit until it becomes a liquid and then stored at essentially atmospheric pressure. Converting natural gas to LNG, a process that reduces its volume by about six hundred times, allows it to be transported. Once delivered to its destination, the LNG is warmed back into its original gaseous state so that it can be used just like existing natural gas supplies." It is this quality that makes it so attractive to the transportation industry's bottom line. But it can be used everywhere. The Center for Liquefied Natural Gas goes on to say, "When returned to its gaseous state, LNG is used across the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors for purposes as diverse as heating and cooling homes, cooking, generating electricity, and manufacturing paper, metal, glass, and other materials." Add to this the fact that LNG is not explosive. When it does escape into the air it simply evaporates, leaving no residue on water or soil.

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