sto­ries by

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Pro­man has fi­nalised an agree­ment to build two ad­di­tion­al 49,900dwt methanol dual-fu­el MR tankers, bring­ing its to­tal in­vest­ment in methanol-pow­ered ves­sels to six new­build­ings.

Pro­man will be the sole own­er of the Prov­i­dent and Pro­gres­sive, along­side the Promise which is due to be de­liv­ered in Q3 2022.

These ves­sels join Pro­man’s ex­pand­ing fleet, in­clud­ing its three joint­ly owned methanol dual-fu­el tankers with JV part­ners Ste­na Bulk.

The new ves­sels will al­so be built at Guangzhou Ship­yard In­ter­na­tion­al (GSI), for de­liv­ery in Q4 2023, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

The Prov­i­dent and Pro­gres­sive will be trad­ed glob­al­ly for ship­ping chem­i­cals and clean pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts, en­abling shipown­ers world­wide to ex­pe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of these state-of-the-art and 100 per cent re­new­able-ready methanol-pow­ered ves­sels.

The Prov­i­dent and Pro­gres­sive will utilise the same pi­o­neer­ing ves­sel de­sign and in­no­v­a­tive MAN B&W 6G50ME-C9.6 MW Tier III en­gines as the Promise and Pro­man Ste­na Bulk-owned Ste­na Pro Pa­tria, Ste­na Pro Mare and Ste­na Pros­per­ous, Pro­man ex­plained.

The ves­sels will al­so be equipped with the lat­est en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing con­tin­u­al­ly con­trolled com­bus­tion, op­ti­mised tun­ing, re­designed and aero­dy­nam­ic hull lines, and an en­er­gy shaft gen­er­a­tor, re­duc­ing fu­el con­sump­tion and help­ing to meet strict emis­sions cri­te­ria.

Each ves­sel will use ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,500 tonnes per an­num of methanol as a ma­rine fu­el. Us­ing wide­ly avail­able “grey” methanol pro­duced from nat­ur­al gas, green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions in the ves­sels’ nor­mal com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced com­pared to con­ven­tion­al ma­rine fu­els, in­clud­ing the vir­tu­al elim­i­na­tion of sul­phur and par­tic­u­late mat­ter, 60 per cent re­duc­tion of ni­tro­gen ox­ide and ten to 15 per cent cut in car­bon diox­ide.

David Cas­sidy, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive of Pro­man, said, “This is a sig­nif­i­cant and ex­cit­ing in­vest­ment for Pro­man. It re­flects not on­ly our con­tin­ued growth but al­so our com­mit­ment to lead­ing the way to a green­er ship­ping fu­ture.”

He added that methanol has huge po­ten­tial to bridge the gap from fos­sil to ful­ly re­new­able fu­els, with its clean-burn­ing and biodegrad­able qual­i­ties mak­ing it par­tic­u­lar­ly at­trac­tive as a ma­rine fu­el.

“As the sec­ond largest glob­al methanol pro­duc­er, which we trans­port to all ma­jor bunker­ing ports, along­side our grow­ing in­vest­ment in green methanol pro­duc­tion and ves­sel own­er­ship, Pro­man has a pres­ence at every part of the clean ship­ping val­ue chain.

“By mak­ing these ves­sels avail­able on the glob­al mar­ket, we hope to en­cour­age oth­ers to join us on this im­por­tant jour­ney to­wards re­duc­ing emis­sions from the in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping sec­tor,” Cas­sidy added.

Ani­ta Ga­jad­har, MD of Pro­man Mar­ket­ing, Lo­gis­tics and Ship­ping, al­so not­ed that Pro­man’s in­vest­ment in these ves­sels is tes­ta­ment to its be­lief in methanol as a ‘fu­ture-proof’ ma­rine fu­el.

“With reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IMO) and grow­ing take-up from some of the world’s largest ship­ping com­pa­nies, methanol’s glob­al avail­abil­i­ty, ease of han­dling and high­ly scal­able sus­tain­able path­way makes it hard to beat as the ship­ping sec­tor’s path­way fu­el to the fu­ture.

“With the com­bined ad­vances in ves­sel de­sign, en­gine tech­nol­o­gy and the use of low-emis­sion methanol fu­el, these new­build­ings will set a new bench­mark for sus­tain­able fu­ture-ready MR tankers,” she said.

Pro­man will con­tin­ue to work with its trust­ed part­ners Ste­na Bulk for project man­age­ment of the ship­build­ing. Ste­na will al­so pro­vide ship man­age­ment ser­vices for the Promise, Prov­i­dent and Pro­gres­sive via its sub­sidiary North­ern Ma­rine.

Pro­man is an in­te­grat­ed en­er­gy com­pa­ny and the world’s sec­ond largest methanol pro­duc­er.

Head­quar­tered in Switzer­land, with as­sets in the Unit­ed States, Trinidad and Oman, and on­go­ing ex­pan­sion in­to Mex­i­co.

Pro­man is a glob­al leader in methanol, fer­tilis­er and oth­er prod­ucts such as melamine and has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in petro­chem­i­cal plant op­er­a­tions, petro­chem­i­cal and pow­er plant con­struc­tion, mar­ket­ing and lo­gis­tics, and project man­age­ment.