South Korean shipyard Samsung Heavy Industries said it was awarded a contract worth 3.9 trillion South Korean won ($3 billion) to build 14 liquefied natural gas carriers, apparently with 12 of the ships being for Qatar’s expansion project.
SHI declined to say in a regulatory filing whether the bulk of the new orders were related to a potential mega-deal from QatarEnergy after South Korean shipbuilders were asked by the Qataris in 2020 to reserve a major portion of their LNG ship construction capacity.
The shipbuilder received a separate order for two vessels and worth around $430M from an unnamed client in Africa to deliver the two ships by the end of December 2024.
The latest orders brought SHI's total for 2022 to $6.3Bln for 33 ships, including 24 LNG carriers.
With these orders, SHI said it had achieved 72 percent of its annual order target estimated at $8.8Bln for 2022.
SHI’s 12 newbuild carriers, destined to deliver Qatari volumes and which would be Bahamian-flagged, would each have capacity of 174,000 cubic metres.
SHI said this latest order marked the single largest shipbuilding contract and LNG carriers order that a Korean shipyard had been awarded.
In March 2021 the shipyard had obtained a then record order worth $2.48Bln to build 20 containerships with capacities of 15,000 twenty-foot units.
DSME order
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering disclosed on June 8, 2022, that it had received a $850M order for four newbuilds from Qatar.
The LNG carrier orders are increasing to keep pace with LNG and demand liquefaction plant expansion by nations such as Qatar and the US.
DSME, the world's No. 4 shipbuilder by order backlog, said it would build the Qatar project vessels with 174,000 cubic metres of capacity at the Okpo shipyard on the south coast and deliver them by the first half of 2025.
The DSME order was the first result of a $19 billion contract that DSME, SHI and Hyundai Heavy Industries, signed with Qatar to construct scores of LNG vessels through 2027.
The contract is in line with Qatar's plan to boost its LNG production capacity to 126 million tonnes per annum by 2027 in two expansions from the current 77 MTPA.
