LNG-shipping safety around ports and terminals

The design of port lay-outs and terminals suitable for LNG-carriers has to meet exceptionally high safety standards. The highly sensitive subject is always treated by the responsible parties with the utmost concern for the design of inherently safe terminals. This is reached through the careful choice of the terminal location within the port and the definition of strict nautical procedures around the entrance, transit, mooring and loading/unloading of the vessel.

In this article, an outline is given of the maritime issues to be addressed if LNG offloading is envisaged. The issues are grouped around four main themes:
• Port infrastructure design;
• Nautical ship operations;
• Overall Port Shipping Safety;
• Training.

The above themes are interrelated. In greenfield sites many issues are free to determine hence laying great emphasis on the design of the total offloading operation, taking into account all possible interactions between the lay-out of the port, the envisaged operation, the future other port users and the required training levels of all personnel involved. In existing ports often the port infrastructure (lay-out), supporting services (tugs, VTS, aids to navigation) and the other port users are boundary conditions in the process of defining the ship operations and in the assessment of the overall risk. However, the safety primate of LNG operations often allows changes and adaptations to the existing (supporting) infrastructure, traffic flows and operational procedures in the port.

MARIN is covering a good deal of the above-mentioned nautical safety aspects because of her high quality modelling for manoeuvring, safety and mooring purposes. One of our latest projects in LNG-terminal development in Ferrol (Spain) is amongst others a good example of an integrated, safety driven terminal development project, some details of this project are included at the end of this paper. This paper focuses on the inshore LNG offloading terminals and jetties and does not cover the exposed offshore offloading concepts.