Hyundai Mipo to deliver world’s first ballast-free LNG bunkering vessel

South Korea’s Hyundai Mipo Dockyard and the UK-based Lloyd’s Register have teamed up on what they claim to be the world’s first ballast-free liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkering vessel.

Germany’s Bernhard Schulte placed the order for the 7,600-cbm bunkering vessel back in 2016. Once completed, it will be stationed in Lithuania’s port of Klaipeda from where it will supply marine customers and small-scale LNG terminals along the Baltic Sea coast.

The bunkering vessel is currently under construction to LR class at Hyundai Mipo’s Ulsan shipyard and is due for delivery later this year.

The ballast-free concept means that the vessel will not need to install a ballast water treatment system as required by the IMO’s Ballast Water Management Convention, the duo said in a joint statement.

With the entry into force of the IMO’s Ballast Water Management Convention in September 2017, all ships constructed on or after this date, to which the convention applies, will now be required to be fitted with a ballast water treatment system at delivery.

To apply the ballast-free concept to this vessel design, Hyundai Mipo focused to develop the special hull form with “dead-rise”. The vessel will also have a forward ‘engine room and deckhouse’ and a twin propulsion system with azimuth thrusters so that it can retain its damage stability and easily control the trim and heel without ballasting, the statement said.

LNG on the bunkering vessel will be stored in two independent IMO type C tanks.