The 10th annual NGV Rally Blue Corridor-2016: Amber Road will start engines on May 26, 2016, in Saint Petersburg. This year the route is mapped around the Baltic Sea through the territory of Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
Amber Road is taken from an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber from coastal areas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
The main topic of the jubilee NGV Rally will be bunkering of marine vessels with liquefied natural gas (LNG). Round tables — gathering politicians, port administrators, ship-owners and ship-builders, automakers, equipment manufacturers, transportation and logistics companies, as well as media people — will be organized in key Baltic sea ports on the route of the Rally.
Blue Corridor 2015
LNG bunkering becomes exceptionally important in light of increasingly stringent standards on sulphur content in marine fuels in the Baltics enforced in January 2015. LNG offers ship and truck owners an ideal combination of ecological and economic bonuses, thus allowing them to save fuel costs and meet environmental standards.
Natural gas use in road transportation will also be in focus of the discussion.
“A sea port is the crossroads for passenger and cargo corridors with all modes of transport blended into the natural hub for CNG & LNG filling infrastructure”, says Eugene Pronin, the Rally coordinator on behalf of Gazprom Export.
Gazprom mobile refueler
The 2015 Blue Corridor Rally was part of the World Gas Conference’s NGV Village exhibition (hosted by NGV Global), providing examples of natural gas as a motor fuel and presenting the latest developments in the NGV sector. The Blue Corridor convoy included a VW Passat, an Audi A3 g-tron, a Scirocco Racing VW, a Solcity 12 LNG city bus, an Opel Zafira, a Fiat Ducato, and a FIAT-500, demonstrating the versatility of NGV vehicles.
“There are already 1.8 million NGVs driving across Europe. They are helping to save fuel costs and clean air. In light of the recent commitments undertaken by international community at the COP21 conference in Paris, the expansion of LNG use on marine vessels becomes a matter of a particular importance”, Andre Schumann, Head of Technical Cooperation and Project Support Department at Uniper, underlined.
More than 150 factory built CNG and LNG vehicles has participated in NGV Blue Corridor rallies since inception, driving 34,000 kilometers across 22 European countries from Yekaterinburg to Brussels and from Helsinki to Sochi.
The rally is traditionally coordinated by Gazprom Export LLC and Uniper SE (former part of E.ON).
(Source: Gazprom Export)
