What is a gas tanker?

Gas tankers are ships which have been specially designed for the transport of liquefied gas or liquefied natural gas.

Most of these freighters can easily be recognized by their spherical gas tanks, which are always above the upper half of the deck.

This type of vessel is often used as an alternative to gas transport in pipelines.

What is loaded on gas tankers?

As the name implies, gas (e.g. chlorine, ethane, ammonia or nitrogen) is transported on gas tankers.

In order to make the shipment as efficient as possible, the gas is first liquefied to reduce the cargo volume.

Technical features of gas tankers

The characteristic spherical shape serves, among other things, thermal insulation as well as compressive loading.

However, there are also types of gas tankers which cannot be recognised from the outside by their shape. These have rectangular gas tanks, which are difficult to recognize from the outside, which leads to the fact that they can easily be confused with oil tankers.

In contrast to other cargo ships, the m³ total tank volume plays a role.

In recent years, a trend towards ever larger ships has been observed in this segment.

Currently the preferred capacities are between 125,000-147,000 m³, but there are plans for ships with up to 250,000 m³ tank capacity.