When it comes to fueling our trucks, ships and heavy equipment, natural gas is becoming an important part of the answer.
“It’s cheap, it’s clean, it’s abundant, it’s domestic,” Chad Verret, executive vice president with Harvey Gulf International Marine, tells 10/12 Industry Report in a feature from the current quarterly issue. “It’s the only fuel that Democrats and Republicans can be hand-in-hand on. It’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ for the Republicans, and it’s clean and green for the Democrats.”
Harvey Gulf recently added to its fleet three offshore service vessels that mainly run on liquefied natural gas. Three more are under construction.
The company also has unveiled North America’s first marine LNG fueling terminal at its Port Fourchon operations headquarters, where Harvey Energy, the first American-flag vessel primarily powered by LNG, was loaded with 43,000 gallons of LNG in January.
While the kind of LNG fueling terminal Harvey Gulf has introduced at Port Fourchon is brand new, a coalition of marine industry stakeholders is at work on bringing LNG to much broader accessibility for marine use.
A “best of industry” team plans to make LNG widely available to ship owners as a propulsion fuel, Marine Log reported in December. The team, led by Siemens Drilling and Marine, Dresser-Rand and Lloyd’s Register, aims to provide an end-to-end solution, encompassing the entire supply chain, that will remove obstacles that can hold back widespread adoption of natural gas as the marine fuel of choice.
Meanwhile, North America’s leading railroad giants continue to quietly test the waters with natural gas locomotive trials, Gladstein, Neandross & Associates reports. Companies are evaluating both GE and Caterpillar gas engines, while running pilot LNG locomotives across the country to assess their durability in diverse climates.
Florida East Coast Rail began full-system, revenue-service trials of LNG, running GE dual-fuel locomotives between Jacksonville and Miami earlier this year, extending its previous trial route between Jacksonville and New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona.
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