A techno-economic study of shipping LNG to Indonesia from US, Australia, and Qatar by LNG carrier

Abstract

With respect to the Indonesian natural gas supply and demand, the margin between combined supply and the next 15 years demand results to a negative supply after the year 2019. It is mandatory for the government to increase the supply either by importing natural gas from the other countries. From Indonesian location, there are a few countries which have abundant resources of natural gas in different locations as potential exporters. For this paper, we developed a model that estimates the cost of shipping one MMBTU of LNG on a per-voyage basis from three natural gas producer countries which are the US, Qatar, and Australia. The shipping cost of the project is calculated by summing up the port and passage fees, LNG carrier hire cost and fuel oil cost. This analysis demonstrates that shipping from Australia has the lowest cost with 0.43 USD / MMBtu. The shipping costs from Qatar and the US are 1.03 USD/MMBtu and 3.16 USD/MMBtu, respectively. Based on the analysis, the shipping cost is mostly influenced by the fuel cost compared to other costs. The pure-gas burning propulsion system is also feasible to be used. The cost-benefit of using boil-off gas generated rather than oil fuel as a primary fuel should be studied further to give more comprehensive analysis.