Cruise ships and liquefied natural gas

Driven by tougher international and environmental standards, LNG is more and more used as a transportation fuel in cruise ships.

There are more passenger ships in the LNG powered fleet than any other type of vessel. Being “LNG Ready” could be the best option for many ships since the International Maritime organization (IMO) decided in October 2016 to introduce the 0.5% global sulphur cap in 2020 rather than 2025. According to LNG world shipping, there were 40 such passenger ships in service in 2017 compared with 30 a year ago, and 32 on order up from 23. Cruise ships were particularly concerned because their itineraries fall within emission control area (ECAS) where restrictions on atmospheric pollution levels are particularly strict. Carnival Corp’s, AIDAPrima was the first cruise ship to run LNG in port, but not the least. Moreover, this evolution could concern all large-scale shipping in the near future because of the environmental and economics positive aspects, but hurts to the need of space for specific storage system, higher security than classic oil fuel, and delivery availability.

Source: LNG world shipping « Cruise chips boost the LNG-fueled passenger fleet. »

See also : http://bit.ly/NL72-Bloomberg-Cruise-Ships and http://bit.ly/NL72-MarineInsight