A dual-fuel product tanker owned by Sweden’s Furetank has become the first foreign-flagged vessel to bunker LNG at a US port.

The 18,000-dwt oil and chemical carrier Fure Ven (built 2019) bunkered around 525 cbm of the fuel at Eagle LNG Partners Talleyrand Bunker Station in Jacksonville, Florida.

The LNG was transferred directly from Eagle’s on-site storage tanks onto the vessel.

September first

The bunkering operation, which took place on 1 September, took around seven hours.

Fure Ven was laden with a renewable diesel cargo for Swedish petroleum and biofuels company Preem.

The tanker had transited the St. Johns River to call at the Jaxport terminal which also supplies LNG bunkers to US company Crowley Maritime Corp.

In another first GAC Group, which provided ship agency services to the vessel on its trans-Atlantic voyage, brokered the LNG fuel. This was the first time that GAC’s Bunker Fuels division had secured a deal to supply LNG as a marine fuel.

In a joint statement Furetank, Eagle LNG and GAC said: “This milestone paves the way for more international trading vessels to bunker at Jacksonville Port Authority (Jaxport). It also builds confidence in the case for LNG to help the shipping industry meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations, while still generating substantial cost savings.”

History lesson

Furetank chief executive Lars Hoglund noted that his company first decided to convert one of its vessels to run on LNG in 2014.

Encouraged by this, he said Furetank developed its V-series vessel design which has cut CO2 emissions by 55% CO2, NOX by 86% and SOX and particulate matter by 99% compared to vessels of the same size, of earlier designs.

“These vessels have already cut CO2 emissions beyond the IMO target of a 50% reduction by 2050,” Hoglund said. Bunkering the ships with liquefied biogas would eliminate those CO2 emissions.

Hoglund added: “We note with pleasure that LNG bunkering is becoming available in more and more places, not least the US, and we are confident that investing in the V-series particularly contributes to a cleaner environment worldwide.”

Caribbean promise

Eagle LNG president Sean Lalani said his company has carried out 100 bunkering operations safely in partnership with US shipping company Crowley Maritime.

“Were it not for the pioneering spirit of our partners at Crowley Maritime ... and the vision of chairman and CEO Tom Crowley, this historic milestone for LNG bunkering globally and for North Florida would not have been possible,” he said.

“We look forward to utilising our experience and assets to bunker more international vessels from this facility and our future operations in the Caribbean basin in the coming months and years.”

GAC Bunker Fuels’ global director Nicholas Browne said that, like Furetank and Eagle LNG, his company wants to do more than follow the development of a more environmentally friendly shipping industry.

“We want to play an active role in creating and facilitating the transition,” he said.

Browne said the company is "actively being engaged by many of our shipping principals to support their adoption of LNG as a marine fuel".