MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wartsila (Helsinki, Finland) and shipping group Grieg Star (Bergen, Norway) have received cash support of 46.3 million Norwegian krone (USD5.3 million) from a Norwegian government-backed innovation fund for a project aimed at building a tanker powered by green ammonia, according to Chemweek.
The two companies are jointly managing the project to launch an ammonia-fueled tanker producing no greenhouse gas emissions by 2024. The tanker is planned to ship green ammonia from a proposed factory in Berlevag, Norway, to various locations and end-users along the coast in Norway. The eventual design, size, and volume of the vessel will be dependent on the market and end-user interest, they say.
“We see a strong interest from owners of ferries, offshore supply ships, fishing vessels, and from energy-producing companies. In total, they require an amount of energy surpassing what we can achieve in this project. The market is there without a doubt,” says Vidar Lundberg, chief business development officer at Grieg Star. Norway is “probably the perfect arena for the world’s first market for green ammonia,” he says.
Ammonia is promising as a carbon-free fuel for marine applications, in view of the maritime industry’s need to fulfill the International Maritime Organization’s vision of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by at least 50% by 2050, according to Wartsila.
As MRC reported earlier, Borealis announced force majeure on its feedstocks and cracker supplies from its Porvoo, Finland cracker on 11 November, 2020. The company's 400,000 mt/year of ethylene and 223,000 mt/year of propylene cracker was shut because of technical issue. The failure was outside of Borealis' scope of responsibility. The cracker resumed production in early December, the force majeure was lifted after the restart.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia decreased in January-November 2020 by 17% year on year and reached 569,900 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the greatest reduction in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia increased by 21% year on year to about 202,000 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2020. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
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