IMO Awards for Exceptional Bravery at Sea 2013 go to American rescuers and a Chinese seafarer

American rescuers and a Chinese seafarer have been presented with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea 2013, during a special ceremony held on 25 November 2013 at IMO Headquarters in London.

Aviation Survival Technician Second Class Randy J. Haba and Aviation Survival Technician Second Class Daniel J. Todd of the United States Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, were nominated by the Government of the United States, for responding to a distress alert from HMS Bounty, during the pre-dawn hours of 29 October 2012, and overcoming the effects of cold, fatigue and ingesting sea water to deliver 14 crew members of HMS Bounty to safety, during Hurricane Sandy.

Mr. Yang Jinguo, a crewmember on the ferry Tong Chang Qi Du 11, was nominated posthumously by the Government of China, for sacrificing his own life while trying to rescue a person in distress on the ferry, after it had collided with the cargo ship Shun Qiang 28.

The winner’s widow, Mrs. Gu Meiying, received the certificate and award on his behalf. … Continue Reading

Wärtsilä’s 2-stroke dual-fuel engine introduced

The marine industry is already showing significant interest in the new Wärtsilä 2-stroke, low-speed, dual-fuel (DF) engine technology. More than 130 industry executives from 89 leading shipping companies attended the introductory event in Trieste, Italy on November 12, which is in itself a clear indication that there is global recognition of the role that LNG fuel will play over the coming years.

The significance of the new Wärtsilä technology is that the low pressure, dual-fuel benefits that are already available to 4-stroke engines, can now be applied to 2-stroke engines as well. Phrases like ‘game-changing’, ‘gas revolution’ and ‘a paradigm shift’ were used at the event to describe the introduction of the new engine. This is hardly surprising since it means that this technology is now available to the broader merchant shipping market, along with the dual economic and environmental advantages that it offers.

On the environmental side, the overwhelmingly important benefit is that Wärtsilä’s unique low pressure DF engine is NOx compliant with the IMO’s Tier III regulations without secondary measures. There are no sulphur emissions and close to zero particulate emissions, while the pilot fuel consumption is extremely low at just one per cent of the fuel used. … Continue Reading

First LNG supply to Kaliningrad Region scheduled for late 2017

Led by Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, a meeting dedicated to increasing the security of gas supply to the Kaliningrad Region took place in the Company’s headquarters.

It was pointed out that Gazprom was performing large-scale activities aimed at securing reliability and boosting gas supply to the consumers of Russia’s western enclave. In 2009 the Company doubled the capacity of the Minsk – Vilnius – Kaunas – Kaliningradgas pipeline to 2.5 billion cubic meters per year and expanded the Krasnoznamenskaya compressor station. This September Gazprom commissioned Phase 1 of the Kaliningradskoye UGS facility with the working gas capacity of 52 million cubic meters and maximum daily deliverability of 4.8 million cubic meters (average gas consumption in the Region is 5.9 million cubic meters).

The meeting considered and adopted the Action Plan for Securing Reliable Gas Supply to the Kaliningrad Region. The work is expected to be done in two main areas – creating an alternative route for natural gas delivery and expanding gas reserves of the existing UGS facility. … Continue Reading

Eni: the new supercomputer for Eni’s exploration & production activity starts work

The system is hosted in the new Eni Green Data Centre and it is among the most powerful installations in the world

San Donato Milanese (MI), 18 November 2013 – Eni has fired up  its new Petaflop class supercomputer. The supercomputer will support hydrocarbon exploration activities, providing the computing capacity needed to improve the accuracy and resolution of the geophysical and geological studies, which are essential to locate and develop new hydrocarbon reserves and to project safe and optimal drilling activities. Eni will have an available computing capacity in excess of 3 Petaflops. The system is able to achieve a performance comparable to most powerful computing centres worldwide.

The supercomputer is based on a cluster architecture with a system consisting of 1.500 dual CPU nodes (24.000 cores), enhanced by 1.300 General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU),which are used as computational accelerators (equivalent to 20.800 additional cores).Cluster nodes are connected by a very high speed internal network and data storage is assisted by a high bandwidth parallel storage system  providing 5 PetaByte disk capacity. The computing capacity will be maintained to the level needed to match business requirements with an annual replacement of half of the nodes every year in order to constantly keep the pace of the HPC technology development cycle. … Continue Reading