Technology Has the Capacity for Niche Role

MARINE compressed natural gas projects could start in earnest within three-to-five years.

According to Xiuli Wang, vice president at Houston-based CNG facilitator Xgas, the technology could find its niche in distributing gas to smaller markets, for handling associated gas and for monetising stranded gas fields.

In the Mediterranean region, she suggested CNG would be an appropriate way of getting gas from exporters such as Libya and Egypt to consumers in Malta, Cyprus and the Greek islands.

She described how a market with an annual demand of more than 5 billion cubic metres could have its own dedicated fleet of vessels and schedules - called a hub and spoke operation - with smaller markets sharing the same vessels and schedules, or milk run.

In terms of the Greek islands, Crete and Rhodes could be the hub and spoke centres while smaller islands - Limnos, Kos, Lesbos, Xios, Samos, Thira, Milos, Paros, Siros and Mikono - would be supplied via a milk run.

In the Caribbean region, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic would come under a hub and spoke play, while a milk run would serve the Windward and Leeward Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Virgin Islands, among others.

Wang, speaking at an Informa-organised conference, also identified Indonesia's island chains as an ideal place for CNG to make its mark because of a lack of access to gas.

CNG could be sourced internally and shipped to the key consuming islands of Java and Bali from current and future LNG export centres in Sumatra (Arun), East Kalimantan (Bontang), Sulawesi (Padang and Sengkang) and West Papua (Tangguh).