2009: “The year of LNG”


Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has become the fastest growing sector of the world’s gas market. With many large LNG offloading projects planned this year in the Offshore Basin, 2009 can be proudly proclaimed “The year of LNG”. Report reviews some of the ongoing projects and gives insight in MARIN’s role.


What can MARIN do for


your LNG project? To make floating LNG terminals and production units financially viable, they have to be available for at least 98% of the time. Therefore, a thorough insight into downtime events, including the persistency and seasonality, is a crucial part of the decision- making process. A typical 300,000 m3


FSRU (Floating Storage


and Regasification Unit), for instance, has a buffer storage of about 80 hours. Consecutive downtime events longer than this can obviously have a large impact on the project. MARIN’s hydrodynamic and nautical studies unravel the complex ques- tion of the overall availability of these facilities. This requires an integrated approach involving basin tests, numerical studies and full mission bridge simulations.


Our LNG expertise includes: - Reviews of the design basis and environmental conditions - Workshops on nautical aspects of the offloading operations and related equipment


- Feasibility studies of side-by-side and tandem offloading, based on time domain simulations of the behaviour with MARIN’s N-body time domain program aNySIM


- Optimisation of the mooring and fendering configuration based on simulation results


- Fast time manoeuvring simulations for optimum approach and departure procedures


- Tug efficiency analysis in waves - Mooring and green water analysis in survival conditions - Basin model tests for feasibility checks and tuning of numerical models


- Full mission bridge simulations for optimisation of procedures and training of crews


Eelco Frickel & Jaap de Wilde j.dewilde@marin.nl


- LNG Sloshing assessments - Downtime assessments based on scatter diagrams or long time traces of wind, waves and current


Palette of MARIN LNG operability activities: from detailed hydrodynamic analysis to tug efficiency analysis, full mission bridge operations and downtime analysis


report 17


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