Small Ships Are Next Big Thing for $150 Billion LNG Market - Bloomberg

Small Ships Are Next Big Thing for $150 Billion LNG Market - Bloomberg:

Giant ocean-going tankers built the liquefied natural gas industry into a $150-billion-a-year business. The next expansion opportunity may come from ships a seventh of the normal size.

Fifty-five years after the first commercial LNG tanker sailed from Algeria, this segment of the gas industry is pushing into ever more niche markets, upending the economics of energy supply in the process.

Its next leap forward will be serving customers whose ports or budgets are too small to handle regular LNG tankers. Known as small-scale LNG, the idea is to make the fuel chilled to minus 160-degrees Celsius (256 Fahrenheit) accessible to factories, trucks, ships and even households. That’s set to spur production capacity growth of 58% over the next five years, more than double the pace of the industry in total.