Hyundai Samho has terminated contracts for three LNG carriers the shipbuilder won last year from a Liberia-based owner and signed new deals with a firm based in Oceania, according to its parent Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering.
KSOE said on Wednesday Hyundai Samho originally won and order for one LNG carrier with a price tag of 198.9 billion won in January last year and scheduled for delivery by August 2023.
The other order won in July the same year includes two LNG carriers worth 420.7 billion and scheduled for delivery by August 2024.
KSOE said it had terminated the contracts due to a disrupted supply of key parts necessary to build the LNG carriers.
The Korean firm did not reveal the name of the owner, but shipbuilding sources told LNG Prime that these orders are connected to the three 174,000-cbm LNG carriers Sovcomflot had chartered to French energy giant TotalEnergies for a period of up to seven years.
The two firms first signed a charter deal in January last year and added two more vessels in July.
Prices jump
Following the contract termination, Hyundai Samho signed new contracts for the three LNG carriers with a new shipping firm based in Oceania.
One source said that the firm behind the new order could be Greece’s Alpha Gas that took delivery of four new LNG carriers in 2020-2021.
According to KSOE, the delivery of the vessels remains the same as in the original orders.
However, the price for the first carrier jumped from 198.9 billion won to 314.1 billion won ($242 million).
As per the two other LNG carriers, the price increased from 420.7 billion won to 628.2 billion won ($484 million), KSOE said.
This is not the first time that Korean yards terminate LNG carrier orders by Sovcomflot.
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering recently said it had terminated an order for another LNG carrier tied to Sovcomflot after the shipowner missed the payment deadline.
