Poland’s state-owned gas company PGNiG and its compatriot Grupa Lotos joined forces in providing LNG bunkering services using supplies from the Świnoujście import terminal.
The agreement comes following a year-long cooperation that saw the two companies complete 30 LNG bunkering operations at the Remontowa shipyard in Gdańsk, the two companies said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Mateusz Bonca , Grupa Lotos president, said the company is engaging in a number of alternative fuel projects, and the cooperation with PGNiG in LNG trade is part of the company’s development strategy.
Henryk Mucha president of PGNiG Obrót Detaliczny, a PGNiG unit engaged in the project, said the cooperation has been going on since September 2016, with the pair delivering LNG fuel for newbuilds at the shipyard.
The two companies expect the LNG as fuel to be gaining in popularity due to the proposed sulfur cap in the sulfur emission control areas (SECA) which include the Baltic and the North Sea.
“The use of LNG fuel will allow shipowners to reduce operating costs and enable compliance with increasingly stringent environmental regulations,” Marcin Szczudło , vice-president of PGNIG Obrót Detaliczny’s CNG/LNG business.
The two companies see the development of bunkering infrastructure is a key element of the further increase in the popularity of LNG.
According to the EU directive for alternative fuels – by 2025 at the latest, a base network of LNG bunkering points should be established in seaports. In the case of Poland, these are to be: Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Świnoujście, locations also included in Polish Ministry of Energy’s national framework for the development of alternative fuels infrastructure.
Grupa Lotos has already signed a letter of intent with Remontowa LNG Systems for the construction of a pilot LNG distribution system, that includes the design, construction and testing of a docking station.