The 174,000-cbm LNG Megrez, owned by a joint venture consisting of China’s Cosco Shipping and Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, has completed sea trials in China.
The vessel returned to Hudong-Zhonghua’s yard in Shanghai on September 21 following a 14-day trial.
This is the fourth and final conventional Yamal LNG carrier the Chinese yard is building for the venture.
As previously reported, the owners will officially name the LNG vessel during the second part of October.
LNG Megrez has an overall length of 290 meters featuring two WinGD’s dual-fuel engines and GTT’s No96 membrane cargo containment system.
To remind, Hudong delivered the third vessel in this batch, LNG Phecda, last month.
The yard handed over the first carrier of the quartet, LNG Dubhe, in October 2019 followed by the second vessel, LNG Merak, in January this year.
These Yamal carriers have not been designed to directly load chilled fuel at Novatek’s 16.5 mtpa LNG plant in the Russian Arctic.
They don’t have ice-breaking capability such as the ARC7 carriers that serve the plant in Sabetta.
The plan for them included taking transshipped LNG at European terminals, previously delivered by ice-class carriers, for onward distribution mainly to Asia.
However, as previously reported, both LNG Dubhe and LNG Merak have in August directly loaded the fuel at the Arctic plant.