ANCHORED in Falmouth Bay the Danish tanker JS INEOS Insight looked like any other vessel of her type taking on bunkers.

Yet the futuristic vessels JS INEOS Insight and her sister ship JS INEOS Ingenuity are in fact the world’s largest LNG-Ethane tankers. INEOS plans to ship 800,000 tonnes of ethane across the Atlantic annually so port watchers will, in all probabilit,y see these ships calling for bunkers from time to time.

The brand new tankers, the first of eight such Dragon class vessels, were specially built to ship the hydrocarbon ethane from the shale basins of the United States to plants in Norway and Scotland. Ethane is used in the petrochemical industry for making plastic bags, antifreeze and other goods.

On her hull, JS Ineos Insight sports the slogan Shale Gas For Manufacturing.

The ships have a propulsion system capable of operating on ethane cargo boil-off as well as LNG and diesel oil.

INEOS is investing $1billion in the UK onshore shale gas exploration and appraisal.

Copenhagen-based Evergas, wholly-owned by Greenship Gas of Singapore and parent Jaccar Holdings of Luxembourg, has a 15-year deal with INEOS to ship ethane feedstock, originating in western Pennsylvania’s shale gas deposits, to the Swiss chemical group’s refineries in Scotland and Norway.

Ethane is obtained as part of the processing of natural gas, and is mainly used as a feedstock for the production of ethylene. Two dedicated import terminals have been constructed at INEOS Olefins & Polymers’ petrochemical plants at Rafnes, in southern Norway, and at Grangemouth, on the Forth in Scotland.

A huge investment project at Grangemouth has included the construction of a 60,000m3 ethane storage tank, the largest in Europe.