BW LNG’s FSRU, BW Paris, has recently rescued nine Indonesians from a raft at Makassar Strait in Indonesia.
The Singapore-flagged 162,000-cbm BW Paris, to be renamed BW Batangas, on October 13 spotted a small raft in the distance with people waving for help, according to a social media post by BW LNG, a unit of gas shipping giant BW.
“Our Captain and crew recognized the distress situation and commenced rescue operations, alerting the authorities and our BW Fleet Incident Management Team,” BW LNG said.
For three days, the group of people had been stranded at sea holding on to a small raft after their boat cracked and sunk, while transporting vegetables to the local islands.
“The crew helped them onboard, provided immediate first aid, and provided them with water, hot food and our BW boiler suits. The crew also arranged for them to rest in one of our cabins,” BW LNG said.
“Although the men were completely exhausted, we were thankful no injuries were sustained. Later that night, the Indonesian Navy dispatched their vessel and we transferred them onboard safely,” it said.
This FSRU will next year start serving the Batangas LNG import terminal in the Philippines.
Philippine power producer First Gen last year awarded the five-year FSRU contract to BW, as it looks to replace declining volumes from the Malampaya gas field.
The firm controlled by the Lopez family and BW recently also agreed to rename the vessel to BW Batangas ahead of the launch of the Batangas LNG import terminal in 2023.
First Gen expects to complete the construction works on the LNG import facility in the first quarter of 2023.
It plans to deploy the chartered FSRU by the end of Q2 or early Q3 2023.
