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Skangass has announced that it will make liquefied natural gas (LNG) more readily available as a marine fuel in Skagerrak, Kattegat and the Baltic Sea by operating the Coralius, a new specialised bunker vessel.

Skangass has entered into a long-term agreement for the vessel, which is designed to offer greater flexibility by operating as a ship-to-ship bunker vessel, as well as a feeder. The new vessel is scheduled to be ready in early 2017.

"Skangass has a profound belief in the potential growth of LNG as fuel for the marine market. Consequently, the company has taken another major step in developing this market by entering into a long-term charter for the 5.800 m3 bunker vessel Coralius," the company said in a statement.

"The vessel will provide easy access to LNG bunkering to customers and limit the operational impact of calling a port in order to bunker. During the design phase, great emphasis has been placed on the ship's systems for ship-to-ship operation to ensure that she is optimised to perform LNG bunkering offshore," Skangass added.

Tor Morten Osmundsen, CEO of Skangass, remarked: "Recently, we entered into our first ship-to-ship bunker contract with NEOT in Finland. Building the new vessel Coralius is the natural step for meeting this demand, and further developing our marine LNG supply chain. Although we already satisfy our marine clients' needs by truck-to-ship and terminals-to-ship bunkering, we need to further develop the infrastructure. By doing so, we will also be in a much stronger position to meet steadily rising demand for LNG."

Skangass said: "Coralius will deliver LNG to marine clients in a flexible and safe way, offering excellent accessibility and high transfer rates to minimise bunker time. The increasing demand for LNG from marine customers can be attributed to LNG being a clean fuel that meets MARPOL Protocol regulations that require sulphur emissions to be lower than 0.1% in the ECA area (Emission Control Area)."

The Coralius construction project forms part of the Flexi Joint Industry Project (JIP), which is one of the pilot projects of the European Union (EU) project Pilot LNG - an initiative that was set up to establish an LNG bunkering infrastructure within the EU.

Skangass developed the Coralius project in cooperation with Anthony Veder and Sirius.

The Coralius is to be built by the shipyard Royal Bodewes in the Netherlands. The vessel will be owned by the Swedish/Dutch joint venture Sirius Veder Gas AB and operated by Sirius Rederi AB of Sweden.