Eagle LNG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ferus Natural Gas Fuels LP, has begun constructing a natural gas liquefaction plant in West Jacksonville, Fla., that will supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Crowley Puerto Rico Services Inc. to power its Commitment Class trade ships.
According to Eagle LNG, the facility is slated to be operational and producing high-quality LNG by early 2017. The company specifies that it will have a capacity of 200,000 gallons per day, but 87,000 gallons per day initially.
Beginning in early 2017, the plant will supply LNG to Crowley to be used in their new LNG-powered Commitment Class ships for U.S. mainland to Puerto Rico trade. The facility has production capacity beyond Crowley’s needs, so the excess supply will be available for sale to both domestic clients in the Southeast and island customers looking for containerized LNG supply.
“Having reliable access to sufficient quantities of LNG will be essential to our operations as we introduce our new LNG-powered Commitment-Class ConRo ships to the Puerto Rico market next year,” says John Hourihan, Crowley’s senior vice president and general manager in Puerto Rico services. “The facility will also afford us the opportunity to export LNG in ISO tanks to customers in Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean Basin – something we are already doing with LNG sourced from outside of Florida.”
According to Eagle LNG, the new plant will feature a 1,000,000-gallon storage tank and an LNG truck loading system. The company says the LNG plant is also designed to load LNG ISO containers for supply to nearby island markets.
