China’s Dalian Shipbuilding Industry (DSIC) has officially signed deals to build three LNG carriers for a joint venture consisting of units of Cosco Shipping Energy Transportation and Sinopec.
LNG Prime reported on August 23, citing shipbuilding sources, that DSIC will build three 175,000-cbm LNG carriers for China Energy Shipping, the Hong Kong-based JV in which Sinopec’s unit Kantons Investment holds a 49 percent stake and Shanghai Cosco Shipping LNG holds a 51 percent share.
Cosco Shipping Energy Transportation said on Thursday that the JV entered into the shipbuilding contracts with DSIC and China Shipbuilding Trading via three units. The units are Venture LNG, Valor LNG, and Vision LNG.
The deals are worth about $700 million or some $233.3 million per vessel.
Cosco Shipping said the delivery of the vessels is expected to take place on or before March 31 2027, June 30, 2027, and April 30, 2028, respectively.
Following delivery, the vessels will serve Sinopec under long-term charters deals to ship US LNG volumes Sinopec contracted from Venture Global LNG in November 2021, Sinopec previously said.
Under the 20-year sales and purchase agreements, Venture Global will supply of a total of 4 million tonnes per annum of LNG from its Plaquemines LNG export facility in Louisiana to Sinopec.
13 LNG carrier orders for DSIC
DSIC won its first large LNG carrier order for two ships from CMES in March 2022 and after that CMES added six more vessels.
Also, DSIC recently signed a deal to build two LNG carriers for a joint venture consisting of China Gas, Wah Kwong Maritime Transport, and CSSC Shipping.
Including these three new vessels, DSIC has 13 large LNG carriers on order.