Green Pioneer
The Green Pioneer has a 20 tonne C-type tank holding liquid ammonia on its deck.
It has four conventional Cummins four stroke diesel engines, two of which have been adapted to combust a diesel-ammonia blend of up to 30 per cent ammonia.
It is a diesel-electric vessel, so the engines are generating power for an electric motor to run the propulsion, rather than driving it directly.
The work to convert the engine to run on ammonia was done at Fortescue’s land-based testing facility in Perth, Western Australia. It has also been trialled at a 50 per cent blend.
The vessel was converted to run on ammonia at the Seatrium yard in Singapore.
The first ammonia bunkering trial was done at an ammonia facility on Jurong Island, in the Port of Singapore in March 2024.
The vessel had bunkered with ammonia fuel twice by March 2025. It is using hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) instead of fossil diesel.
The vessel is managed by Anglo Eastern Ship Management.
The vessel does not have any new technology on it, Fortescue says, just known technology put together in new ways.
Safety of ammonia
Andrew Forrest, CEO of Fortescue, believes “ammonia is a perfectly safe shipping fuel.”
“I'm very happy with the safety. I consider it new, not unsafe,” he says.
Given a choice of conventional fuels or ammonia, “I'm not sure which one is worse [for safety].”
Gas will ignite with a match, but ammonia doesn’t, he points out.
When crew connect the ammonia pipeline for bunkering, after making the connection they check it is gas tight using nitrogen. Then they leave the manifold and control the bunkering remotely from the bridge. The pipelines are all double walled.
The vessel is fitted with alarms and automatic shutdowns set to 30 ppm ammonia level. US regulatory (OSHA) guidelines state that exposure of 50 ppm over 8 hours is a permissible limit and 300ppm is immediately dangerous to health.
Flue from the engine is passed through a scrubber where nitrous oxides and any un-combusted ammonia can be washed out. Any purge gases can also be sent through this scrubber.
The vessel was provided with class and statutory certificates by DNV in April 2024. DNV has been involved in the project since 2021, when Fortescue engaged it to work on the feasibility study and ammonia notation for the vessel's conversion.
DNV's Technology Qualification process provided the framework for the qualification and assurance of the engine modifications, where industry rules were yet to be developed.
DNV’s Gas Fuelled Ammonia notation set out the requirements for the ship’s fuel system, fuel bunkering connection and piping through to the fuel consumers.
With no IMO regulations covering the specific use of ammonia, DNV and Fortescue used the SOLAS provision for Alternative Design Arrangements (ADA) with the backing of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, particularly around fire and evacuation risks.
Fortescue
Fortescue is one of the world’s largest mining companies. CEO Andrew Forrest says that together with Rio Tinto, it ships more goods than any other company in the world by weight.
Fortescue’s website says that each year the company loads 970 iron ore carriers from Port Hedland, Australia, with 190m tonnes shipped every year. It is a major supplier of iron ore to the Chinese steel industry.
Fortescue is a major developer of green hydrogen projects, made by renewable electricity.
It is involved in green hydrogen projects in Morocco, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Gladstone (Australia), Hemnes (Norway), Holmaneset (Norway), Pecem (Brazil) and Pampas (Argentina).
Green hydrogen and ammonia
Green ammonia is made from green hydrogen, which is made with renewable electricity. So its availability and cost is linked to the availability and cost of renewables. Mr Forrest believes that there is no need for concern about that.
“Our ability to make electrons is enormous. The scale is infinite - never running out,” he says. “Technology is becoming better and better, and cheaper and cheaper.”
“In 1 year, 3 years, we'll have this technology everywhere.”
Mr Forrest is very sceptical that methane can be a transition fuel, since there are still large amounts of methane leaked to the atmosphere over the production and combustion chain. Calling it a transition fuel is “untrue, fake news,” he says.
Mr Forrest is a strong proponent of IMO implementing a carbon tax and says that a tax of just $100 a tonne would make green ammonia fuel competitive with conventional fuels.
He thinks that IMO should not be set up to make agreements by consensus. “I can’t even get my family to agree,” he said.
The company is “very confident” that ammonia propulsion can be “put in a bulk carrier before the end of the decade.
The company chooses ammonia after asking the question, “where are the sources of fuel that can do more for me than greenwash,” he says.
“Any fuel with carbon - organics, biofuel - you compete directly with food.”
Asked when green ammonia will be available for shipping, Mr Forrest replies, “I am whipping my team every day. Give us a couple of years.”
Asked for his view on Maersk orientating towards biofuels, he replies, “we love Maersk, [but] we are in a different position. Our customers say, ‘we don't want anything killing the planet.’ Maersk are slightly insulated from that pressure.”
Forget offsets
Mr Forrest is very sceptical about the use of offsets in calculating carbon emissions. “Offsets don't work,” he said.
A common estimate is that only 25 per cent of offsets are real, he says. So, using offsets is equivalent to relying on a medicine with only a 25 per cent chance of success.
“The world ‘net’ in ‘net zero’ has been dangerous,” he says. It allows mining companies to avoid taking action. “’Net’ means you will greenwash your way out. ‘Net’ means no change at all,” he says.
Instead, Fortescue prefers the term “real zero”.