South Korea’s Daehan Shipbuilding has delivered the first of four LNG-powered Aframax tankers to Greek shipping firm Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN).
TEN announced the delivery of the 115,000-dwt Njord DF in a statement released on Thursday.
Its AIS data provided by VesselsValue showed on Friday that the LNG-powered crude oil tanker has left South Korea earlier this week.
TEN ordered four tankers at Daehan in September 2021 and the contract included two options.
Each of the ships is worth about $75 million.
TEN said in the statement that the four vessels will serve long-term charters with a “major European state-owned oil concern”.
Nikolas Tsakos, founder and chief executive of TEN, previously said the firm was in negotiations to charter dual-fuel Aframax tankers to Norwegian energy giant Equinor.
The introduction of this vessel kickstarts the delivery of TEN’s existing “green” growth program with now nine remaining vessels expected to be gradually introduced to TEN’s fleet over the next ten quarters, it said.
Besides the LNG-powered tankers, the program includes two DP2 shuttle tankers, two scrubber-fitted suezmax vessels, and two scrubber-fitted MR product tankers.
Moreover, the gross revenues from this four-vessel industrial program are expected to reach $520 million should all extension options get exercised, TEN said.
TEN also said that it expects to take delivery of the second LNG-powered vessel in the “next few weeks”.
Daehan launched this newbuild vessel named Ran DF in July and Njord DF in June, according to its website.
The other two ships are Chios DF and Ithaki DF and TEN expects to take delivery of these ships in the first quarter of 2024.
