Carbon transport's cost efficiency and the case for an ambient LCO2 carrier

摘要

"Keep in mind: this is garbage we are transporting," Knutsen NYK Carbon Carriers (KNCC) CEO Anders Lepsoe told delegates at Riviera Maritime Media's CO2 Shipping & Terminals Conference. Produced in partnership with Norton Rose Fulbright, the event was held in London on 30 June. Stressing the disposable nature of the cargoes his joint ventures ships will carry, Mr Lepsoe said that linking the carbon transport market to oil and gas models could skew the fundamental economics of the emerging sector and make them unworkably expensive. "We have to keep in mind that we are transporting something that we will get rid of. It is garbage, and that is key to the reasoning and the way we need to build this value chain. We need to establish commercial models that reflect this," he said. "If we are not able to make this as flexible and open a market as we can ... it will increase prices." To be cost efficient, Mr Lepsoe said the carbon transport market needs to grow substantially in order to have sufficient numbers of CO2 projects to support more and larger vessels. The 12,000 m~3 vessels that currently serve the market, he said, are fine for the current 'small-scale' state of the market and its projects, "but we need to be able to develop large-scale vessels, larger capacity vessels."