液化天然气开发利好海事界

What's going on in LNG is a real bonanza for the maritime world

实现海上液化天然气加工，也就是利用我们所称的浮动式液化天然气（FLNG）技术，在产地实现天然气的液化。这对于海事界而言无疑是好消息。

Shale gas has turned the tables in the US with a floater now being planned off the Texas coast, but this time for export, when the talk only five years ago was all about imports, not to mention the FLNG explosion in Australia, which in not too long is slated to rival current production leader Qatar. It is funny to cast one’s mind back five years to an announcement by ExxonMobil that it was planning to spend $1bn building a floating facility off New York. The project was designed to accept imported LNG for onward movement to the fuel-starved markets of the US eastern seaboard. It was shelved. Now it is a rather smaller company, Excelerate Energy, that is leading the way with plans to anchor a floating LNG (FLNG) vessel off the coast of the US: for export. And it will be located not off the world’s famous city but Port Lavaca, a tiny town in Texas whose main claim to fame, according to Wikipedia, is that it was home to Hope Dworaczyk, the first model to appear in 3D in Playboy. This amazing turnaround for the US — and clearly Port Lavaca — has come about due to the land-based US shale-gas revolution but the really hot FLNG market is in Australia. The US is likely to be exporting LNG by 2017 but at a relatively small amount of 13.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Australia could be exporting 100 mtpa before 2020 if things go to plan. All this to feed a global market that could more than double to over 450 mtpa by 2025.The sea-based systems offer major financial savings on land-based LNG solutions and — like their oil-floater counterparts — are much more flexible. But innovation often comes with teething problems, as we saw with the containment domes on the new generation of LNG ships. And there are still huge costs involved at a time when shale and other unconventional gas sources are likely to drive future international prices down.