John Fredriksen’s Flex LNG has found employment for four of its five speculatively-ordered newbuildings scheduled for delivery this year.
The company said its 174,000-cbm sistership newbuildings Flex Aurora and Flex Amber, which are under construction at Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries are “employed” on an ex-yard basis.
The same applies to the 173,400-cbm newbuilding Flex Resolute under construction at DSME, the shipowner said in a presentation launched ahead of a webinar this week.
Flex detailed that the three ships are fixed on variable time-charters with the earliest redelivery being from second quarter 2021 onwards without giving further details.
Brokers have listed two unamed Flex vessels as fixed to Spain's Naturgy for periods of four to five months at rates in the high $50,000 per day range.
This means that four of the five previously uncommitted LNG newbuildings delivering to Flex this year have been fixed.
In November the company announced it has fixed the 173,400-cbm newbuilding Flex Artemis to trader Gunvor’s are Clearlake Shipping for up to 10 years from the ship's delivery in mid-August.
Flex chief executive Oystein Kalleklev said the company does not generally comment on shorter period fixtures but described them as multi-month.
Kalleklev told TradeWinds the company is focused on building a mixed portfolio of long and short term charters, both on fixed and variable hire as well as spot.
But the CEO added: “Our aim is to build shorter term relations into longer term engagements.”
He said Flex’s modern large ships fit best on long term contracts where they can replace the around 160 older steam turbine and tri-fuel diesel-electric LNG carriers that are due for re-delivery under long term charters by 2025.
“This in line with our strategy communicated which also included bringing in ship management services.”
Flex is expecting the LNG shipping market to improve in the autumn as cargo cancellations tail off and with an anticipated increase in floating storage and believes it is well-positioned for this.
The company said it expects to see the market grow by around 10m tonnes this year — down on the 25 mt expected before the Covid-19 pandemic — which will look fairly flat compared to 2019 volumes.
Flex is scheduled to take delivery of one more newbuilding this year, the 173,400-cbm Flex Freedom and the remaining two of its 13 ship fleet in 2021.
