CIMC Enric pioneering international gas transport

China's hunger for natural gas has pushed CIMC Enric Holding Ltd, one of the country's biggest liquefied natural gas equipment manufacturers by sales revenue, to upgrade its products.

Its newly-designed, high-performance, large-capacity LNG tankers are expected to redefine oceanic transport of natural gas.

"Once this mode of transportation is launched and widely accepted, a lot of wasted offshore natural gas will be saved," said Yang Baoying, deputy general manager at CIMC Enric.

The new 40-foot (12.2 meter) containers passed security tests in the United States recently. Each of them can enable LNG imports in small batches, and successfully implement the LNG one-tank, multimodal transport on road, rail and water. They could also raise standards for LNG logistics in the global market.

CIMC Enric also completed a sea trial for a 14,000-cubic-meter LNG carrier in November 2016. This is one of 20 LNG feeder vessels available in the world.

The added value and technical content of LNG carriers are more advanced than those of oil tankers, and they will be equipped with tanks that can resist extremely low temperatures.

The company produced the world's first CNG transport ship capable of moving 700,000 cubic meters of CNG for its client in Tantong, Jiangsu province, in 2016.

Even though demand for LNG is depressed and under pressure, thrust on low carbon energy use will see LNG playing a key role in the optimization of the domestic energy structure, said Sun Hongli, another deputy general manager of CIMC Enric, a subsidiary of China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd.

Bao Zhangjing, director of the China Shipbuilding Industry Research Center, said: "At present, most of the associated gas gained from offshore drilling projects is commonly burned as waste gas, including in China and other countries."

The company's product range includes storage tanks, LNG carriers, import terminals and export terminals. CIMC Enric specializes in the manufacture of equipment for energy, chemical and liquid food industries.

Its equipment and engineering business covers both onshore compressed natural gas and its industrial chain, as well as the offshore LNG industrial chain.

zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 01/27/2017 page25)