Estonia, Gas, Port, Transport

"Due to unclear reasons the new ships were built with hermetic rooms for LNG containers which take up quite a lot of space, but MTU diesel engines were bought for the ship which can't be switched for LNG-fired engines," said Heino Punab, head of the Estonian Maritime Academy's ship mechanics department.

According to Janek Parkman, a member of the board of Jetgas, the first company to launch the LNG business in Estonia, their last calculations show that the energetic price of diesel fuel is twice as high as LNG's. He added that the people who commissioned the ferries probably only took into account the cost of the ferries which would have cost up to a third more with LNG-fired engines.

TS Laevad told that by now the company has not made calculations regarding the potential cost of switching the engines of the four ferries being built in Turkey and Poland, adding that there is at the moment no reason to discuss switching the engines.