Hong Kong-based Tiger Gas, led by former Seaspan CEO Gerry Wang, has taken delivery of the third out of four LNG ISO tank carriers in China.
China’s Yangzijiang Shipbuilding said in a statement on Sunday that the vessel named Tiger Lianyungang has already left the yard on its maiden voyage.
This vessel follows the first CCS-classed vessel, Tiger Longkou, that joined Tiger Gas in January, and Tiger Maanshan in February.
These ships are the world’s largest LNG tank carriers with a capacity to carry 690 40ft LNG ISO tanks or about 15,000 tons of LNG.
The 192 meters long vessels have LNG dual-fuel engines and also feature type C tanks. CSSC Hudong Heavy Machinery provided the engines and the fuel gas supply system (FGSS), Yangzijiang previously said.
Yangzijiang said the ships would operate at a speed of 16 knots and while sailing on LNG would have a range of up to 5,000 nautical miles.
All of the ships will be capable of transporting ISO tanks in both deep sea and inland waters such as the Yangtze River.
Containership move
Tiger Gas previously planned to use these vessels to mainly transport ISO tanks from Malaysia to China.
However, Tiger Gas chartered the first vessel in this batch, Tiger Longkou, to Hong Kong-based shipping firm SITC.
SITC said in a statement in February it would use the vessel to transport containers on its China-Japan route.
It remains unclear whether the other two delivered tank carriers would also work as containerships.
Alphaliner said earlier this year that this could be the case for all the four vessels due to a strong and profitable containership market.
Besides this, one source told LNG Prime on Monday that one of the reasons for the switch could be that Petronas is currently not so much interested in ISO tank deliveries due to very high LNG prices, making these deliveries way to expensive for customers.