Two more LNG specials for Germany

The identical 95m loa and 19.5m wide newbuildings will enter service in 2023 and 2024 and replace two emergency response ships serving in the North Sea and Baltic – the 56.1m Scharhörn, built in 1974, and the 80.4m Mellum, built in 1984.

The duo will be delivered with LNG plants installed and will boast bow helicopter landing pads. They will be built by Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder. A&R pioneered SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) technology 20 years ago. It has since delivered about 30 of the stable ships for a range of applications and now leads the world in the sector.

The Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV), which ordered and will operate the new ships on behalf of the German Government, said an option for a third identical ship had been secured with A&R. It would replace the 78.9m x 18m multi-purpose pollution control Neuwerk, completed in 1998. A decision on that will come this year, the WSV said.

The orders now for the two new LNG ships had been expected some time ago. Invitations to tender went out mid 2018 and WSV spokeswoman Claudia Thoma told Maritime Journal later that “extensive re-planning to cover LNG propulsion” had put back the original time-table. That followed a decision to fit the new ships exclusively with as yet unidentified LNG rather than Diesel-electric systems, as stipulated in the original tender invitation.

Thoma revealed to Maritime Journal however that the newbuilds would have a side height of 7m and would draw 5.5m when operating as buoy layers and 6.1m when involved in accident recovery work. The ships would weigh 5,200 tons empty and have a bollard pull of 1,450kN, she added.

They are the final two in a now confirmed trio of state-of-the-art multi-purpose ships announced by the Government some time ago. The 75m, €114 million survey, wreck location and research newbuild Atair from Fassmer Werft was entering service by mid year with the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) in Hamburg. That ship is billed as the world’s first governmental research vessel with LNG propulsion. Wärtsilä 20DF and 6L20 engines were chosen.