South Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has won a contract to build a floating storage and regasification unit at a record price which is significantly higher than the last FSRU newbuilding concluded.
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering said today that its group yard HD HHI has secured an order to build a 174,000-cbm FSRU for a European owner. It did not name the contracting party.
The shipbuilder priced the FSRU, which is due for delivery by July 2027, at KRW 483.9bn ($363m).
This is a big leap up from the $337m paid by US regas specialist Excelerate Energy when it contracted an FSRU at the same yard in October 2022.
Brokers indicate that the pricing for today’s unit looks like a record price for an FSRU newbuilding.
Some newbuilding sources named Japanese shipowner Mitsui OSK Lines as the contracting party.
MOL said it had no comment to make when asked about the FSRU newbuilding.
In early February, MOL scooped the job of providing an FSRU to Polish energy company Gaz-System.
At the time, HD HHI was tipped for the newbuilding.
Gaz-System has said previously that it plans to conclude a 15-year deal on the 6.1bn cbm capacity FSRU, which will be put into operation off the Port of Gdansk.
The FSRU will be berthed at a mooring platform located about 3 km from the shore, with some 250 km of transmission pipelines constructed as part of the project to link it to the grid and allow gas to reach central Poland.
This newbuilding for Poland looks set to give MOL its eighth regas vessel.
FSRU newbuildings are proving scarce partly due to berth availability but also the high price of units.
Excelerate Energy has hinted at its interest in ordering a second unit and last week stressed its focus on fleet and downstream growth during a results briefing.
Separately, Singapore LNG is pursuing a tender for an FSRU.
But aside from this potential business, project developers indicate that the interest for FSRU is largely focused on the conversion of LNG carriers into regas units.
