Shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean is to plough cash into its US arm to enable company entities to buy shares in US LNG developer NextDecade as South Korean parent Hanwha Group advances its LNG interests.
A report in Business Korea said Hanwha Ocean will participate in a KRW 360bn ($260.7m) rights offering by its US arm Hanwha Ocean USA Holdings.
It said this follows an investment of KRW 180bn by Hanwha Ocean into its US arm in March.
The Korean report detailed that a subsidiary of Hanwha’s US entity, Hanwha Ocean USA International, then plans to invest a total of KRW 540bn to buy shares in NextDecade.
This will mirror a move made by another Hanwha Group company, Hanwha Aerospace, which announced on Friday that it had paid out KRW 180.3bn to buy 17,536,368 shares in NextDecade giving it a 6.83% stake in the liquefaction developer.
Hanwha Impact has already invested some KRW 80bn in NextDecade and has a seat on its board of directors.
Together, the Hanwha Group companies are expected to hold over 15% in NextDecade.
The buy-in is seen as part of the South Korean conglomerate’s move to grow into the clean energy sector.
NextDecade and Hanwha Ocean have a historic connection.
The US LNG company was set up by the late Kathleen Eisbrenner in 2010, who also founded Excelerate Energy.
Eisbrenner turned to Hanwha Ocean forerunner — Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering — to build Excelerate’s fleet of floating storage and regasification units.
Today NextDecade, which is building up its own shipping fleet, is developing the 27 mtpa Rio Grande LNG export project in Brownsville, Texas. A 17.6 mtpa first phase is already under construction.
Last week, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco signed a non-binding heads of agreement for a 20-year LNG sale-and-purchase agreement with NextDecade for 1.2 mtpa of LNG for 20 years from the yet-to-be-sanctioned Train 4 at the Rio Grande LNG facility.
NextDecade is also developing one of North America’s largest carbon capture and storage facilities through its subsidiary Next Carbon Solutions.
