Email signatures these days often come with more than just a company logo, but a whole bar chart is getting serious.
That is just what came through from one senior executive at a well-known Russian shipowning company that has made a pioneering move towards LNG fuelling for tanker tonnage.
Sovcomflot (SCF Group) has just announced a charter deal with Shell for two of six LNG-fuelled aframax newbuildings under construction in South Korea.
The energy major, which signed up to supply LNG bunkers to the vessels when they were first ordered, will take the duo on charter for up to 10 years.
The first is due to leave Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries in July after being named Gagarin Prospect in honour of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
When the ship emerges, prepare for sharp intakes of breath. Not only will the 114,000-dwt vessel bear eye-catching, deck-mounted LNG bunker tanks, it will sport a green hull, rather than Sovcomflot’s traditional blue, red and white representing the Russian flag.
Some hard internal lobbying had already been in play for the vessels to have green funnels, but the company decided to go even further.
The Russian owner is marketing its new ships under its new "SCF eco" brand and has emblazoned each 850-cbm bunker tank with its new green "eco" tag.
On Watch understands that the “eco” reflects Sovcomflot’s belief that LNG as a marine fuel makes sense “economically and ecologically”.
And it seems the company is finding new ways to distribute that message. The bar chart slipped into the email signature spells out graphically that the new breed of aframax will offer a 27% reduction in CO2, a 76% cut in NOx — in comparison with existing tankers — and eliminate SOx and particulate-matter emissions entirely.
These guys really are serious.
