Moving forward with its plans to order a major new fleet of gas carriers (see Pacific Maritime Magazine, May 2020) Qatar Petroleum has entered into an agreement with China’s Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group to reserve construction capacity that can be used to build the vessels.
The agreement reserves a large portion of Hudong’s LNG ship construction capacity through the year 2027 and covers the potential construction of a significant number of 174,000 cubic meter capacity LNG carriers. These would be built to a China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) “G4 + Changhui” design that would be customized to Qatar requirements, with the potential that construction contracts would exceed $3 billion in value. CCSC has called the capacity reservation agreement “the largest shipbuilding export order undertaken by Chinese shipbuilding companies to date.”
