Qatari LNG shipping giant Nakilat has placed orders worth about $955 million with South Korea’s Hyundai Samho for the construction of two LNG tankers and four LPG carriers.
S.Y. Park, president and COO of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, and Nakilat’s CEO, Abdullah Al Sulaiti, signed the shipbuilding deal on January 9.
The LNG carriers will each have a capacity of 174,000 cubic meters, while the very large LPG/ ammonia gas carriers will each have a capacity of 88,000 cbm.
Nakilat will take delivery of these vessels between 2026 and 2027, but the company did not provide the price tag of the deal.
HD KSOE said in a filling to the stock exchange on January 10 that the entire order is worth about $955 million. It did not break down the price for just the LNG carriers.
The latest orders for LNG carriers at HD Hyundai’s yards were priced at about $265 million per vessel.
However, shipbuilding sources said that Nakilat most likely secured a lower price for these LNG carriers as VLGCs, VLACs are currently priced between $115-120 million.
71 LNG carriers
Upon delivery of the two new LNG carriers, Nakilat’s LNG fleet will expand to 71 vessels, while the LPG fleet will grow to eight vessels, it said.
In October 2021, Nakilat took delivery of the 173,400-cbm Global Sea Spirit, followed by the delivery of the 174,000-cbm Global Sealine in January 2022. Hanwha Ocean, previously known as DSME, built these vessels.
Nakilat’s fleet currently includes 24 conventional LNG carriers, 31 Q-Flex vessels (210,000-217,000 cbm), 14 Q-Max vessels (263,000-266,000 cbm), and also one FSRU.
The company’s LNG fleet has a combined carrying capacity of over 9 million cubic meters, or some 12 percent of the global LNG fleet carrying capacity, according to Nakilat.
(Article updated on December 10 to say that the entire order is worth about $955 million.)