Samsung Heavy Industries, the third-largest South Korean shipbuilder, posted a widening of net losses in the first quarter of 2020, while reporting that the floating LNG production vessel for the Coral project offshore Mozambique was now half completed.
The company also report steady order book progress with three received in the quarter and two more in April.
The “ENI Coral FLNG” vessel for the project led by Italian energy company Eni is scheduled to be delivered in 2022 and was said by SHI to be already 47 percent completed.
When deployed offshore Mozambique over the Coral South gas field, the FLNG unit will produce 3.3 million tonnes per annum.
Coral FLNG is the African nation’s most advanced project with the other two being onshore joint ventures, one led by French major Total and the other by ExxonMobil, with Eni and PetroChina as principal partners.
SHI said that from January to March, its losses amounted to 227 billion won ($185 million), more than double the losses of 102.6 billion won ($83.7M) recorded in the same three months a year ago.
The shipbuilder said the South Korean currency’s weakness against the US dollar drove up the evaluation losses from its forward exchange contracts taken out for reselling five drilling ships.
Operating losses widened to 47.8Bln won ($39.0M) from a loss of 33.3Bln won ($27.2M) a year ago.
SHI noted that in April 2020, after the first quarter, it received a 253.6 billion-won ($208M) order to build two very large crude oil carriers for an unnamed Bermuda-based shipping company.
It had received orders for three shuttle tankers during the first quarter.
SHI had a new orders backlog of US$21Bln as of March 2020, including 98 commercial vessels.
As well as being Korea's third-biggest shipbuilder, behind Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, who are in the midst of a merger process, SHI is the seventh largest in the world.
The SHI orderbook list comprises 21 LNG carriers ($7.7Bln), 19 container ships ($2.4Bln) and 37 tankers, ($2.7Bln) as well other ships. The full total was $13.3Bln in orders.
In the offshore division the orders for drilling rigs and offshore platforms amounted to $7.7Bln.
