LNG Helps US Space Programme

US utility Southern Gas's subsidiary Pivotal LNG said March 26 it made its first LNG delivery to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) after securing a contract to supply its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama in autumn 2017.

Pivotal LNG is a specialist small-scale supplier so, although the size of the delivery was not disclosed in its statement, it is likely to have been a small volume trucked by road to the Nasa facility.  

Pivotal and Southern Company Gas operate a network of small-scale LNG production facilities with the capacity to produce over 554,000 gallons per day (2,100 m³/d) of LNG and has storage capacity for more than 96mn gallons. Pivotal, through its JAX LNG partnership with NorthStar Midstream, is developing an LNG production facility in Jacksonville, Florida. The JAX LNG facility is expected to be in service by 2Q 2018.  A month ago Pivotal LNG executed another multiyear contract to supply LNG to Carib Energy, a subsidiary of Crowley Maritime Corp, for a Puerto Rico-based major pharmaceutical company’s energy needs.  Carib's LNG shipments are made to Puerto Rico in ISO container tanks, carried on regular container ships.

Pivotal LNG and NorthStar Midstream jointly have been supplying LNG as a bunker fuel to US shipping company Tote Maritime for the past two years, for use on Florida-Caribbean shipping routes. The LNG was delivered by truck to the ships whilst berthed. In August 2017 the US Coast Guard approved the Pivotal/NorthStar partnership JAX LNG's application to open a waterfront LNG facility and to conduct ship-to-ship LNG bunkering operations between Tote Maritime’s Marlin Class ships and the LNG barge, Clean Jacksonville, starting early 2018.  

JAX LNG, Tote Maritime and Florida-based small-scale supplier Eagle LNG are among the 31 members of the SEA\LNG industry association that seeks to promote the use of LNG as a bunkering fuel.