Eesti Gas Begins with LNG Bunkering in Helsinki Port

Elenger, a subsidiary of Estonian energy company Eesti Gaas operating in foreign markets, has started LNG bunkering in the Port of Helsinki, Finland.

The ship being bunkered is the same that Eesti Gaas bunkers in the Port of Tallinn, the shuttle Megastar, which operates between Helsinki and Tallinn.

“While LNG bunkering is rather a rare sight in the Port of Helsinki these days, it is bound to become one of routine operations in the nearest future: LNG will eventually replace diesel fuel among marine fuels, which will contribute to cleaner air and cleaner Baltic Sea,” Jarko Alanko, CEO of Elenger Finland, commented.

Captain Tarvi-Carlos Tuulik, Head of Ship Management at Tallink Group, says that the most important word in the shipping industry of the 21st century is “sustainability”.

“As far as sustainability is concerned, Tallink Group is one of its pioneers not on the Baltic Sea alone but on the European scale. We have already decreased our footprint on board and onshore compared to what it was before, and we keep working every day to reduce it further in the future for a lower environmental impact,” Tuulik noted.

Tallink’s Megastar will be truck-to-ship bunkered in the Port of Helsinki once a week. Elenger primarily delivers LNG to the Port of Helsinki from the new Novatek’s LNG plant in Vysotsk.

A security zone within 30 meters of the bunkering site will be established in the port during each bunkering operation. In order to completely eliminate the risk of sparks being produced electricity in the security zone will be switched off during the bunkering, according to the company.

By now, Tallink’s vessel Megastar has been truck-to-ship bunkered with LNG in the port located in the centre of Tallinn more than 1,600 times, Eesti Gaas said.

Currently, the Dutch shipbuilding company Damen is building an LNG bunkering vessel for Eesti Gaas. The ship is to render services in the northern and eastern part of the Baltic Sea. It will be completed in 2020 and start bunkering environmentally friendly vessels operating in the Gulf of Finland.