RINA Group Widens Gas Sector Services

International classification, certification and engineering group RINA said it has widened its services to the global gas industry. While its traditional classification society arm RINA Services has recently approved a new Compressed Natural Gas carrier to aid the exploitation of marginal fields, the groups’ engineering arm, D’Appolonia, is delivering geotechnical, social and environmental services to the Mozambique LNG development.

 

The gas market and technology are constantly changing, and RINA Services and D’Appolonia lead those changes, according to the group. The first offshore FSRU, the first FLNG project, the first marine CNG ship and the longest offshore pipeline were all delivered with RINA expertise and assistance.

 

D’Appolonia has completed a major near shore site investigation for ENI’s Mozambique LNG project. The survey included environmental, geophysical and geotechnical teams, utilizing two jack up platforms, three survey spreads, a mobile field laboratory and over fifty site personnel. Data will be used for design of the marine facilities of the terminal and the landfall for the gas pipeline arriving from the offshore wells. The terminal will consist of gas receiving and processing, liquefaction facilities, cryogenic storage tanks and loadout facilities to export the liquefied gas via tankers. 

 

D’Appolonia is also acting as the Independent Environmental and Social Consultant foreseeing the development of offshore production facilities, subsea gas pipelines, and onshore LNG processing facilities. D’Appolonia’s Lenders Engineering division is currently undertaking the Environmental and Social Due Diligence (ESDD) for the Mozambique LNG Project, which is a first of its kind LNG facility on the east coast of Africa.

 

RINA Services has approved in principle the Fincantieri Offshore CNG32000 ship design which is aimed at delivering a cost-effective solution for monetizing marginal gas fields using Compressed Natural Gas technology. The vessel has a double-hull and a cutting-edge system of racks that are separately demountable for in-depth and safer maintenance.

 

RINA Services has developed rules to cover the safety issues related to CNG transportation, with the aid of Approval in Principle and Technology Qualification certifications to cover the most important aspects relevant to the fitness for service.

 

Transporting natural gas under pressure as CNG instead of liquefying it offers advantages of simplicity and much lower cost and so makes viable alternative means of exploiting isolated or marginal gas fields which will not support a full infrastructure.

 

The CNG32000 design features a CNG cargo handling system and a CNG storage system. This entails 500 racks of metallic vessels at 166 bar and 25°C, each rack accommodating twelve pressure vessels of about 5.35 cu m arranged in ten cargo holds giving an overall transport volume of 32,000 cu m (1.13 MMscf).

 

The design follows the recently issued RINA Rules for the Classification of CNG Carriers and IGF Code, and is supported by extensive risk assessment studies on the ship safety, safe operations and environmental protection, including collision studies, which are being carried out in the expected areas where the CNG32000 will trade.