John Angelicoussis-led Maran Gas Maritime is moving in on two LNG carrier newbuildings at the company’s favoured shipyard in South Korea.
Industry sources say an order is not imminent but add that they expect Maran to ink contracts on the vessels before the end of the year.
Angelicoussis has made a point of supporting DSME, particularly during financially challenging periods for the yard, and has rolling options with the shipbuilder.
If confirmed, another two LNG carriers for the Greek shipowner would hoist Maran’s LNG carrier fleet total to 38 vessels, making the company one of the top private LNG vessel owners globally.
Currently, Maran boasts an existing fleet of 27 delivered LNG carriers and nine newbuildings, five of which deliver in 2019 with the rest to follow in 2020.
The company has made a policy of fixing all of its LNG vessels on term charter business, sometimes reserving one or two ships for spot trading.
In addition, Maran is due to take delivery of its first as-yet uncommitted floating storage and regasification unit in 2021.
The company first branched out into the regas sector in February 2017, only later to switch this berth over to an LNG carrier, but went ahead with a later-delivering FSRU option — Hull No 2487.
Maran has previously looked at an LNG carrier-to-FSRU conversion project.
In the past week, it emerged that the company had been in the final three owners bidding to offer a regas unit to Croatia LNG, which is developing a floating import terminal off Krk Island.
Golar Power has been selected to supply the unit on the basis of a conversion of the 140,000-cbm Golar Viking (built 2015).
