National Seminar held on ‘Natural Gas in Coastal and Inland Shipping’

Two-day National Seminar on ‘Natural Gas in Coastal and Inland Shipping’ was inaugurated on at the Institution of Engineers (India) building in Bhubaneswar.

The seminar organized jointly by the Forum for River and Ocean Scientists & Technologists (Frost) and Institute of engineers (India), Odisha State Centre with the support of DRDO and Ocean Sparkle, on Saturday.

Atanu K. Mukherjee, renowned marine engineer and Chairman of the Marine Engineering Division of IE(I) inaugurated the event which was presided over by Professor Parhi, President of the IE(I), Odisha state centre. Professor S. C. Misra, Chairman of Naval Research Board and President of FROST explained the objective of the seminar.

Speaking on this occasion, Mukherjee said, “use of natural gas in power generation, power utility and for propulsion purposes is going prevalence in Europe, China and India could easily jump into the bandwagon. The initiative is to give the momentum to activity of storage, transportation and utility of gas on the Odisha coast and hinterland”.

India has more than 5400 km of coast line in peninsular India and more than 2100 km of coast line around the islands and 4500km of navigable waterways. With demand for natural gas increasing rapidly in the country for road transport, energy generation and other industrial uses, it has become imperative to move natural gas along the coast and also in the rivers.

An LNG infrastructure facility is planned to come up in the Port city of Dhamra in Odisha. Seafarers’ association of Odisha (SAO) was also actively involved in the seminar and has all were withal in terms of manpower resources, technical acumen and logistics expertise. The present seminar aims at generation and dissemination of knowledge base and increasing awareness with regard to natural gas transportation and its use as a fuel in ships moving in coastal and inland vessels.