The Swedish shipping company Furetank Rederi AB has taken delivery of the 17,999 dwt chemical/product tanker Fure Vinga from the Avic Dingheng yard in China. Fure Vinga is the lead vessel in a series of six LNG-fuelled sister ships that the shipbuilder is constructing for operation within the Gothia Tanker Alliance (GTA) pool.
Besides Furetank, other Swedish shipowner GTA members Thun Tankers and Älvtank will contribute Avic Dingheng newbuildings to the pool. All six dual-fuel tankers, which are designed to the Finnish/Swedish ice-class 1A standard, will operate in the North and Baltic Sea emission control areas under the commercial management of Furetank Chartering.
FKAB developed the design concept of the Fure Vinga series in tandem with Furetank and is working closely with the Chinese yard during the construction of the six vessels. Furetank will own three of the ships, Älvtank two and Thun Tankers one. Three more tankers will be completed this year and the remaining pair in 2019.
Among the range of equipment and services Wärtsilä is providing for each ship in the GTA series is a 9-cylinder 34DF dual-fuel main engine and a gas valve unit. Another distinctive feature on each tanker is the pair of deck-mounted 300 m3 LNG bunker tanks.
The Swedish-flag GTA tankers will run primarily on LNG, including in port, although the auxiliary engines are oil-fired. The ships’ gas-fuelling arrangement also enables production of inert gas using LNG, while a battery backup system covering all vital functions helps minimise the need for the auxiliary engines to be used.
The GTA sextet is set to be fuelled in northern waters utilising the 7,500 m3 LNG bunker vessel (LNGBV) that Bernhard Schulte is having built at the Hyundai Mipo yard in Korea in co-operation with Babcock. The chemical/product tankers will be fuelled by ship-to-ship transfers under the terms of an LNG bunker supply contract that GTA has agreed with Nauticor, the charterer of the LNGBV.
The first vessel operating under the GTA banner to run on LNG is Fure West, a 17,600 dwt tanker built in 2006. In 2015 Furetank switched the ship to dual-fuel running by retrofitting its conventional, seven-cylinder, oil-burning MaK M43 C engine in-hull to the MaK 7M46DF configuration and adding a pair of 255 m3 deck-mounted LNG bunker tanks from Taylor-Wharton.
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