South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries has delivered the first out of three 174,000 cbm newbuild LNG vessels to Greek shipper Minerva Gas.
LNG Prime reported on Minerva Kalymnos at the end of January as the vessel was completing its gas trials, prior to its scheduled delivery this month.
The Korean shipbuilder launched the vessel at its Geoje yard in July last year for Minerva Gas, a unit of Andreas Martinos-led Minerva Marine.
Featuring WinGD’s X-DF propulsion, the vessel also has GTT’s Mark III Flex Plus containment system.
Minerva said the vessel would now start work for an unidentified charterer.
As per the second vessel in this batch, Minerva Chios, Samsung should deliver this carrier in September this year while the third newbuild is expected to join Minerva’s fleet in March 2022.
In addition, the Greek shipping firm has another two 173,400 cbm LNG carriers under construction at the DSME yard in Korea.
Minerva already took delivery of the first newbuild in this batch, marking its official entry into the LNG shipping industry.
The firm’s first LNG carrier on water, the 173,400-cbm Minerva Psara, left DSME’s Okpo yard in early January to start work for Shell, according to VesselsValue data.
DSME should deliver the second vessel, Minerva Limnos, in July this year.
These newbuilds feature MAN ME-GI propulsion and GTT’s NO96 containment system.