Korean shipbuilder KSOE wins $1.5 bn order for 7 LNG carriers

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (KSOE), the intermediate holding company of the world’s top shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, has won a 1.96 trillion won ($1.5 billion) order to build liquefied natural gas carriers.

KSOE said on Wednesday it signed a contract to build seven 174,000-cubic-meter LNG carriers for delivery to an undisclosed Asian company.

Although the South Korean shipbuilder didn’t give the company’s name, market insiders believe it to be Qatar Energy, formerly known as Qatar Petroleum.

The Qatari state-run oil company signed contracts reserving a certain portion of the shipbuilding capacity of more than 100 LNG carriers with Korea’s top three shipyards, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. and Samsung Heavy Industries Co. in May 2020. The deal amounted to 70 billion Qatari riyals ($19.2 billion) at the time.            

Including the seven LNG carriers, KSOE is estimated to have won a total of 17 LNG carrier construction orders from Qatar.

Each of the seven LNG carriers is 299 meters in length, 45.4 meters in width and 26.5 meters in height. The carriers will be built at Hyundai Heavy Industries plant in Ulsan, Korea and delivered to the company by 2026.   

KSOE is the world’s top shipbuilder in terms of LNG carriers construction – it has won orders for 41 LNG carrier construction deals so far in 2022. The Korean company has ranked top in the global LNG carrier market for three consecutive years, winning orders to build 21 LNG carriers in 2020 and 26 in 2021.

The Korean shipbuilder has already surpassed its $19.3 billion sales target for this year by 10.6%. It has won construction orders for a total of 161 ships so far this year, including LNG carriers, container lines and oil and chemical tankers.

In the meantime, Korea’s shipbuilding industry achieved first place in terms of shipbuilding orders for July, winning 55% or 1.16 million compensated gross tonnage (CGT) out of a total of 2.1 million CGT, according to Clarkson Research.

The country also topped global shipbuilding orders from January to July 2022, winning 47% or 11.13 million CGT, followed by China scoring 10.07 million CGT, according to the UK shipping data research firm.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.