Middle East producer QatarEnergy has boosted its Q-Max LNG carrier orders in China to 18 vessels, inking contracts on the berths with state-owned shipyard Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) in a deal worth close to $6bn under its huge shipbuilding drive and assigning shipowners to slots.
The Shanghai-based yard sealed the massive newbuilding project for 18 LNG carriers of 271,000-cbm, which will be built as the next generation of Q-Max vessels for Qatar.
According to Chinese news agencies, China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC) inked the newbuildings on Monday morning in Beijing.
The new giant LNG carriers, which are slightly larger than Qatar’s existing 14 Q-Max vessels, are understood to be priced at slightly over $310m each.
Hudong-Zhonghua is scheduled to deliver eight of the 271,000-cbm LNG ships in 2028 and 2029, and the remaining 10 vessels between 2030 and 2031.
Early this year, TradeWinds reported that QatarEnergy declared eight Q-Max berths at Hudong-Zhonghua. The Qatari company committed to an additional 10 berths in March.
Shipbuilding sources close to the deal confirmed the four shipping companies that have been selected to be owners of the Hudong-Zhonghua LNG carriers.
Doha-listed Nakilat takes the lion’s share of the 18 newbuildings, with nine ships in a move that will catapult the Qatari owner’s LNG fleet to 105 vessels.
Chinese owners China Merchants Energy Shipping is building four of the LNG carrier behemoths and Shandong Marine Group three.
China LNG Shipping — the joint venture China Cosco Shipping Corp and China Merchants Group — is involved with two ships.
The 18 newbuildings are part of Phase 2 of QatarEnergy’s colossal LNG shipbuilding project which now stacks up at well over 100 vessels.
QatarEnergy, which added 60 ships in Phase 1 of its project, will be chartering the LNG carriers under long-term contracts.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development in Saudi Arabia Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Al-Kaabi, who is also president and chief executive of QatarEnergy, highlighted his country’s LNG expansion projects in the North Field.
This will grow Qatar’s production to reach 142 million tonnes per annum by 2030.
Al-Kaabi mentioned Qatar’s massive shipbuilding programme, all of which he said will be powered by LNG.
The minister also touched on carbon sequestration.
“Since 2015, we’ve been injecting two and a half million tonnes per annum of CO2 that we’re capturing from our LNG facilities,” he said.
“We have been doing that long before anybody was talking about sequestration or capture. Qatar has the lowest emissions in an LNG scheme from production to ship in the world.”
Al-Kaabi said Qatar “will sequester 11 million tonnes of carbon” from its expansion project.
“We are building the largest blue ammonia plant in the world that has solar power and CO2 sequestration facilities,” he said.
“We are also capturing CO2 from our production sites in the north and sending them via pipeline across Qatar to be injected in the oil field of Dukhan as part of our enhanced oil recovery efforts.”
Al-Kaabi blasted critics for “demonising oil and gas”, explaining that this will not do humanity any good.
“Gas is going to be needed to power the electricity that is needed for expansion and growth. The most important thing is that we all do it in a responsible manner to make sure that humanity can develop and grow.”
This article has been updated to adjust the value of the order and provide additional information on the delivery dates.
