Trelleborg markets LNG hoses [NGW Magazine]

Swedish engineering firm Trelleborg has over 40 years’ experience of manufacturing equipment for vessel-to-vessel oil and liquids transfer but it decided in 2008 to move into the floating LNG (FLNG) transfer business. Since then the market has opened up, and LNG is no longer the preserve of national oil and gas companies and the majors with no interest in changing their way of doing business.

Competition creates an opening for innovative and cheaper solutions and Trelleborg is working to create demand for its product, as gas trade grows.

In an interview with NGW, the director of Trelleborg Oil & Marine Vincent Lagarrigue said it saw LNG as a new business opportunity that would benefit the LNG producer and its customer alike, and has worked for some years, investing millions, in various design concepts. The products also needed to be qualified as fit for service by the marine certification agencies such as DNV GL and Bureau Veritas. This is now done.

It has some competition in its cryogenic hoses, notably from Dutch Gutteling and French TechnipFMC; but the demand for all their products is growing, not shrinking, as gas extends its reach into marine transport and local power generation, he says.

Trelleborg has worked in partnership with other companies specialising in the gas infrastructure sector, and used its flexible Cryoline hoses in a pilot project last year, demonstrating Universal Transfer System (UTS), a floating LNG transfer platform developed in partnership with Connect LNG. The UTS transferred LNG from the Skangas-chartered LNG carrier Coral Energy to the onshore terminal at the Norwegian port of Heroya, and is now in full commercial operation.  

This demonstrates that it is possible to connect its system to any ship – which is important as most of the current LNG infrastructure is not flexible enough for the growing and evolving global fleet of tankers. Another of the benefits of UTS is the installation time and cost: six months rather than the 36 it can take to build a jetty; and up to 80% cheaper.

This makes the application suitable for delivering LNG to places that are awaiting a more permanent solution; as well as to power plants in archipelagos such as the Caribbean, Greece, Indonesia or the Philippines. He said this activity is at the moment of most interest to oil and gas companies.

Cryoline comes in a range of internal diameters, from 6 inch to 20 inch. The latter end is used for tandem operations at the heavy end of the market, where the offloading floating liquefaction (FLNG) vessel is moored in front, separated by 100 metres of water, and with 250 metres of hose linking the two vessels’ tanks. For the biggest operations requiring the transfer of 12,000 m³/hr LNG, Trelleborg supplies three hoses each of 20 inch diameter: two carry the LNG to the conventional tanker for onward delivery to market and the third returns the boil-off for reliquefaction and reloading. Those hoses cost upwards of €20,000/metre, NGW understands, adding up to over €15mn for the lot, but a lot less than a jetty. The gas market is evolving and technology is helping with that, mainly in the cost reduction department: tandem offloading, rather than side-by-side using loading arms such as Shell’s Prelude project, is not only cheaper but also more reliable. If the sea is rough, as it can be in the Timor Sea, loading LNG is harder or impossible. Tandem configuration allows operations in worse sea conditions and it is used in 90% of oil transfer operations. “Technology is an enabler,” he said. “We have been working on innovative solutions to cut costs, and the Cryoline is the result of that.”

Subhead: Safe bunkering

Bunkering might use a smaller hose; owing to the simultaneous loading of containers and fuel, the safety margin is a lot tighter. Although Trelleborg is at the start of that particular journey, it has the capacity to offer marine transportation companies such as French CMA-CGM fast refuelling at the same time as the containers are being loaded.

This reduces docking fees. Sailing from the European Union to southeast Asia requires easy refuelling in Europe, and this means an innovative approach without a jetty, Lagarrigue said. Jetties may not always be feasible for all locations – for instance, if the water is too deep or shallow to allow their construction in a given location. Similarly, they may not be able to accommodate all vessel types. Floating hoses open up the possibilities for infrastructure development by facilitating a wider range of vessels and locations, acting either as standalone solutions or as augmentations to existing terminals. This is in addition to the ease of construction mentioned above.

Safety in all conditions is paramount when it comes to LNG transfer. The Cryoline system has double containment, and integrated monitoring system that give real-time data on the status of loading, which is of interest to French shipping company CMA-CGM, which has to avoid emissions of gas: “a very valuable feature, giving information on cooling down and warming up. Trelleborg cannot afford to be less than 100% safe,” he said – although LNG does have an unrivalled safety record.

Trelleborg sees a number of business opportunities for offloading in the coming years: mainly in the Gulf of Mexico and west Africa, where the second phase of Tortue might lend itself to a different design solution from the first, he said.