Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (SHI) is set to deliver a liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessel ordered by financial and asset management giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) has reported.
“Marking the 30th anniversary of Korea's first LNG carrier built in 1994, the ORION SPIRIT is the 500th LNG tanker to be exported and will be handed over to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co”, the ministry said in a press release after the naming ceremony for the vessel at SHI’s Geoje Shipyard.
“LNG carriers must be able to safely transport liquid gas at temperatures below minus 163 degrees Celsius and require highly advanced technology, costing over KRW 300 billion [$217.4 million] per vessel”, MOTIE noted. “Only nine countries around the world have successfully built the cutting-edge fleet.
“There are 680 LNG carriers presently in the water, three-fourths of which were built by Korean shipyards, and construction of another 256 vessels are underway”.
In the first quarter of 2024, the East Asian country won all orders for LNG and ammonia vessels, while overall ship orders booked by South Korean shipyards in the period totaled $13.6 billion, MOTIE said.
“The high-value orders won in 2021 have entered the export stage this year as well”, it added.
Qatari Orders
A major customer is Qatar, one of the world’s top LNG exporting countries alongside Australia, Russia and the United States. In the latest orders from the Gulf nation, state-owned QatarEnergy announced last month it had signed time-charter agreements for 44 newbuild LNG carriers to be built in South Korea.
Twenty-five of the 44 ships will be owned and operated by Qatar Gas Transport Co. Ltd. (Nakilat) after the two Qatari companies consummated an agreement first announced February 10, QatarEnergy said in a news release March 31.
Being constructed in South Korea, the 25 conventional-size vessels will have a capacity of 174,000 cubic meters (6.1 million cubic feet) each.
The other time-charter agreements signed by QatarEnergy with four more companies “cater for the operation of six vessels by CMES LNG Carrier Investment Inc., six vessels by Shandong Marine Energy (Singapore) Pte Ltd., and three vessels by MISC Berhad; all of which are being constructed at Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea”, QatarEnergy said. “The remaining four vessels will be operated by a joint venture of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. (K-Line) and Hyundai Glovis Co. Ltd. and are being constructed at Hanwha Ocean (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering) also in South Korea”.
These 19 vessels will also have a capacity of 6.1 million cubic feet each, according to QatarEnergy.
QatarEnergy has since 2022 inked long-term time-charter agreements for LNG ships, planning to grow its gas fleet to over a hundred. QatarEnergy has now signed time-charter agreements for 104 conventional LNG ships, according to the March announcement.
On February 23 QatarEnergy said it expects to put into operation by September 2024 the first ship to be delivered from the expansion program.
“43 ships out of the 104 will be chartered by QatarEnergy’s affiliate ‘QatarEnergy Trading’, marking it the single largest one-step ship acquisition program of any single entity in the history of the LNG industry, and placing QatarEnergy and consequently QatarEnergy Trading firmly on the road to becoming a leading global LNG trader”, QatarEnergy said.
