By GURDEEP SINGH
SINGAPORE—When MS Selandia made her maiden voyage from Copenhagen to Bangkok in February 1912 she transformed the ocean-shipping industry, launching an era that would see the shift to oil from coal as the dominant fuel for ships.
Now, 100 years later, a few shipping companies are moving toward a new fuel source, deep-chilled liquefied natural gas, driven by tougher environmental standards, higher oil prices and greater availability of natural gas. Many in the industry see LNG as the ship fuel of the future, given seemingly vast and largely untapped reserves of shale gas world-wide, although its adoption may well be slower than oil's.
"LNG is already being used as a fuel in certain segments, and it has potential to become an energy source used on a larger scale in shipping," said Bo Cerup-Simonsen, head of Maersk Maritime Technology, a unit of Denmark's A.P. Møller-Maersk A/S, operator of the world's largest container-shipping company........
