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THE multi-fuel future of shipping is looking more limited than it was a year ago. We know what the three major molecules are — methane, methanol and ammonia. 

But this isn’t a question of picking a fuel and supporting it as if it were a sports team to be followed blindly. Shipowners are largely agnostic and very pragmatic when it comes to options on the table.

This is not just about the fuel, or the availability of technology and engines, or the regulation, or the carbon pricing, or the offtake agreements and demand signals, or the fact that shipping is in a long queue of other sectors competing for the same supply of molecules — it’s about all of these competing dynamics and the fact that owners have to balance decisions that need to be taken now against the uncertain outcome of all of these factors. 

And in the midst of all that uncertainty the pragmatic view of the immediate choices available to shipping appears to be coalescing around LNG.

Now that’s still a controversial view in some quarters — methane slip, a greenhouse gas 82 times more potent than carbon dioxide — remains a cause for concern. 

But LNG is a fuel in transition, rather than a transitional fuel, runs the argument. When you consider bio-LNG and synthetic LNG, and the ability to combine LNG with carbon capture there is a compelling case for the industry to now converge on LNG as the most pragmatic available pathway right now.

Joining Richard on the podcast this week: