South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries has laid the keel for a 174,000-cbm LNG carrier being built for Greek firm Minerva Gas, a unit of Minerva Marine.
Minerva Gas announced the keel-laying ceremony via its social media on Tuesday.
The ceremony for the LNG carrier Minerva Roxanne (SN2653) took place on June 2.
Minerva Gas did not provide further information.
Samsung Heavy officially started work on this LNG carrier in November last year.
VesselsValue data shows that Minerva Gas ordered this LNG carrier and its sister vessel (SN 2652) in November 2022.
Samsung Heavy laid the keel for Minerva Eleonora earlier this year.
These vessels are expected to serve US energy giant ExxonMobil under charter deals.
Minerva Gas will pay about $215 million per vessel.
These ME-GA vessels feature GTT’s Mark III Flex containment system and are scheduled for delivery in 2026.
Minerva Gas currently has five operational LNG carriers.
In October 2022, Minerva Gas took delivery of the 174,000-cbm LNG carrier Minerva Amorgos from Samsung Heavy.
This is the final LNG carrier in a batch of three vessels SHI built for the Greek firm.
SHI delivered the 174,000-cbm Minerva Kalymnos in February 2021 followed by Minerva Chios in August the same year.
All of the sister LNG carriers feature WinGD’s X-DF propulsion and GTT’s Mark III Flex Plus containment system.
In addition to these three carriers, Minerva Gas took delivery of two LNG tankers from South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.
The 173,400-cbm Minerva Limnos joined the fleet of Minerva Gas in June 2021, while its sister ship Minerva Psara started working with Shell in January 2020.
Both of these newbuilds feature MAN ME-GI propulsion, GTT’s NO96 containment tech, and a partial reliquefaction system.