Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines is being named as the company behind a pricey floating storage and regasification unit newbuilding ordered for KRW 545.4bn ($413.7m) at Hanwha Ocean in South Korea.

Hanwha Ocean announced on Tuesday that it had won the contract for the FSRU from an unnamed client in Asia.

The shipbuilder said the vessel is due to be delivered by October 2027.

Newbuilding sources named MOL as the owner behind the FSRU.

In July, TradeWinds reported that MOL had been selected as the preferred provider to supply an FSRU to state-controlled terminal operator Singapore LNG and detailed that the Japanese shipowner had secured a berth at Hanwha Ocean to build the unit.

A formal announcement is due to be made in Singapore in October.

Contracts for FSRU newbuildings have become rare, with high shipyard prices pushing project developers towards LNG carrier conversions as cheaper alternatives.

But MOL’s Hanwha Ocean FSRU would appear to be an expensive animal — perhaps an indication of the unit’s regasification capacity, specifications and additional features — along with strong prices at yards.

In February, MOL ordered a 174,000-cbm FSRU newbuilding at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries for Polish energy company Gaz-System to be located in the Bay of Gdansk.

The HD Heavy Industries vessel was priced at $363m, which was substantially higher than the last regas unit newbuilding contracted in October 2022 at $337m by Excelerate Energy.

Singapore LNG launched a tender for an FSRU in late 2023.

The terminal operator, which already operates an 11 mtpa onshore terminal on Jurong Island that started up in 2013, has said it is looking for a regas unit with a capacity of up to 5 mtpa.

The FSRU would be based alongside the existing land-based terminal and be connected to the grid via an onshore pipeline. It is due to be in service before the end of the decade, with Singapore LNG as the operator of the unit.

Singapore wants to add an FSRU to cope with increased energy demand and to serve the wider region.

Hanwha Ocean, which was reformed under new owners the Hanwha Group in May last year, has almost doubled its order haul to date in 2024 winning contracts worth $6.1bn to build 31 vessels. This compares to $3.5bn of work in the full year of 2023.

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