Crude Summit: Teekay Tankers skeptical on LNG bunkers

LNG-fueled ships help reduce carbon emissions but are not the solution to achieve the shipping industry's goal to decarbonize by 2050, said Mikkel Seidelin, director of chartering and freight trading at Teekay Tankers.

"We see more tankers being able to burn LNG. It moves us toward our goals but it is not going to get us there," he said at the Argus Crude Summit in Houston today.

LNG-fueled ships account for about 30pc of the global shipping orderbook and far outpace orders for other alternative fuels.

Hydrogen- and ammonia-power ships are the likeliest candidates to decarbonize shipping but are not currently viable, he said.

"At the moment, there is no infrastructure there to fuel the ships. The technology is not there for [ship] owners to place a bet on that," he said of hydrogen- and ammonia-powered ships.

The best solution for shipowners at the moment is to take advantage of the available efficiency improvements, both hardware and software, until "we hopefully soon find the long-term solution to meeting these goals," he said.

By Nicholas Watt