Ship-to-Ship Hydrogen Bunkering

Ship-to-ship hydrogen bunkering: how offshore LH2 transfer would work, why no operational example exists yet, and the bunker vessel concepts currently under development.

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Ship-to-Ship Hydrogen Bunkering

Location-independent transfer, at anchor or offshore, from a dedicated bunker vessel — the most operationally flexible of the four bunkering methods, and, as of today, the only one with no confirmed operational example anywhere.

Every other method on this site has at least one real vessel bunkering this way right now: fixed installations at Klaipėda and Kobe, truck-to-ship on MF Hydra and Windcat’s CTVs, container swapping on Future Proof Shipping’s barges and Viking Libra. Ship-to-ship bunkering — one vessel transferring hydrogen directly to another, at a quay, at anchor, or fully offshore — remains at the concept and early-development stage. We’re including it here for completeness and because the underlying case for it is genuinely strong, not because it’s happening yet.

How It Would Work

The logic mirrors ship-to-ship bunkering already routine for LNG and conventional fuels: a dedicated bunker vessel carries hydrogen (almost certainly LH2, given the volumes involved) and transfers it directly to the receiving ship via vacuum-insulated cryogenic hoses, without either vessel needing to be alongside a quay. In principle this removes the geographic constraint entirely — a receiving vessel could bunker at anchor, in a roadstead, or even underway at reduced speed, wherever the bunker vessel can reach it.

Why It Doesn’t Exist Yet

Two things have to happen before ship-to-ship LH2 bunkering can operate commercially:

A dedicated bunker vessel has to actually get built. Every concept we found is exactly that — a concept, not a newbuild under construction.
Demand has to justify it. A bunker vessel is a large, dedicated capital asset; it only makes sense once there’s a big enough fleet of hydrogen-fuelled ships needing offshore or flexible-location refuelling to keep it utilised — which, per our own ships database, the current global fleet doesn’t yet represent.

What’s Actually in Development

Concept	Developer(s)	Capacity	Status
LH2 bunker/carrier design	Moss Maritime, with Equinor, Wilhelmsen and DNV GL; sponsored by Innovation Norway	9,000 m³	Completed concept design (announced 2019); parked pending market demand — Wilhelmsen’s own framing at the time was that the partners are “ready to take this design to the next level” once demand signals appear. As of 2026, no construction contract has followed.
LH2 tanker for ship-to-ship bunkering	Edge Navigation	Not yet disclosed	Reported in development alongside Edge Navigation’s hydrogen-powered containership programme; tied to the Port of Rotterdam’s stated ambition to be ready for this class of vessel from 2028

The Moss Maritime concept is a useful marker of how long this method has been “almost ready” — a fully worked design with major industrial backers (Equinor, Wilhelmsen, DNV GL as classification society) has existed since 2019 and still hasn’t moved to construction seven years later, precisely because of the demand-chicken-and-egg problem above. Edge Navigation’s more recent plan is the one actually tied to a live infrastructure commitment — Rotterdam’s 2028 readiness target — which makes it the concept most likely to actually reach the water first, though “reported in development” is still a long way from a keel-laying.

Why It Matters Anyway

Ship-to-ship is the method that removes the constraint every other approach on this page has to work around: a fixed installation needs a predictable route, truck-to-ship needs road access to the quay, container swapping needs crane infrastructure and a return-logistics loop. A working hydrogen bunker vessel would serve deep-sea and offshore vessels that none of the other three methods reach well — which is exactly why it’s listed as a “future development focus” rather than dismissed, even with zero operational examples to point to today.

Open Questions

Which concept moves first? Whether Edge Navigation’s newer plan or a revival of the Moss Maritime design (or an entirely different entrant) is first to an actual newbuild contract is genuinely unclear from public sources.
What does the receiving vessel need? None of the site’s tracked LH2 vessels currently specify ship-to-ship-compatible manifold or mooring arrangements — that’s a design requirement that would need to be built into future newbuilds specifically expecting to use this method.
Regulatory framework. IGF Code and ISO 20519 cover ship bunkering generally, but ship-to-ship-specific hydrogen transfer procedures (mooring, exclusion zones between two vessels rather than vessel-and-quay) don’t yet have the same track record as LNG STS, which took years of parallel operation to standardise.