KEYWORDS: energy maritime transport, fleet optimization, compressed natural gas, cng ships.
The rationale of CNG option in prospective regional markets like the Mediterranean is that the offtake and delivery of small-to-medium sized gas fields are less competitive for subsea pipeline and especially LNG transport modes. The needed integration between logistics and conceptual ship design has been the main driver to this paper. To this end, a rational scheme has been implemented which integrates a menu of CNG prototype ships into a logistics framework. The main goal is selection of the optimal fleet configuration for shipping the compressed natural gas from the Aphrodite basin to the Northern Adriatic Arc with various export rates for a given number of gas production years. The final result of this paper is a self-standing feasibility study for the marine transport of CNG across the East Med corridors, complete of cost evaluation, at an accuracy level sufficient to make decision on possible implementation of this transport mode as an economically convenient alternative to subsea pipelines.
