South Korean shipowner Sinokor Merchant Marine is on the hunt for a charterer for its first speculatively contracted LNG carrier newbuilding.
Shipping sources said the 174,000-cbm Pacific Success, the first in a series of four newbuildings, is scheduled to be named at Samsung Heavy Industries on 3 March.
Brokers said the vessel, which is fitted with an X-DF propulsion system, is currently open but the owner is seeking a time charter of between three and five years.
They indicated that there are on-off reports about it being fixed but nothing concrete has emerged yet.
There is some indication in the market that Sinokor could also be interested in selling the Pacific Success once it has concluded charter business on the vessel.
While spot charter rates for LNG carriers have been falling this year, brokers said there is more positive sentiment for term business after 2026, when the market is expected to tighten as more LNG comes online.
Sinokor’s representative has been contacted about this vessel but the owner has consistently not responded to requests for comment.
This first newbuilding for Sinokor has been years in the making.
The quartet was originally contracted in 2019, according to Clarksons’ Shipping Intelligence Network.
The newbuildings are listed as priced at $193m each, the prevailing price level for five years ago but a massive discount on today’s $260m for an LNG carrier.
The first of the four newbuildings was originally due for delivery in 2021. Last year, market talk said Sinokor had been countering offers on the ship from interested buyers on the hunt for early-delivering LNG carriers with quotes of $270m as newbuilding prices climbed to $250m.
Market players said there were discussions about whether Sinokor would go ahead with the vessels.
Eventually, it paid the deposit on the first vessel and brokers have now said it has confirmed on the other three.
The second ship in the quartet — Hull No 2316 — is scheduled for handover in September 2026, followed by the other pair in the first half of 2027.
The South Korean owner made its break into the LNG carrier sector in 2015, buying elderly secondhand vessels and putting several of them into long periods of lay-up before scrapping them. It is listed with six of these ships remaining.
Last year, the company took on a charter with an energy major after buying a secondhand LNG carrier from TotalEnergies and its partner in the ship, NYK.
It paid around $68m for the 154,472-cbm LNG Alliance (ex-Gaselys, built 2007), which included a charterback to TotalEnergies for a period of around 15 months.
