Qatar's historic LNG fleet expansion program includes 104 vessels
QatarEnergy has chartered 19 LNG carriers under agreements with operators in Asia. The current number of such vessels will be 104. The country needs to increase the fleet of gas carriers to increase gas exports, the company’s press service reported on March 31.
Head of the Ministry of Energy of Qatar, President and CEO of QatarEnergy Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said that the Chinese companies CMES and Shandong MarineGroup will supply six vessels each. Malaysia's MISC will provide three vessels, while the joint venture of Japan's Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha and South Korea's Hyundai Glovis will provide four LNG carriers. The capacity of each vessel is 174 thousand cubic meters.
A week earlier, on March 24, the QatarEnergy press service announced the signing of a time charter agreement with Qatar Gas Transport (Nakilat) to operate 25 vessels for the transport of liquefied natural gas as part of a fleet expansion program. New gas carriers are being built in South Korea: 17 ships at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyards, eight others at the Hanwha Ocean shipyards (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering). The capacity of each of them is also 174 thousand cubic meters. These LNG carriers will be chartered by Nakilat to QatarEnergy subsidiaries under 15-year agreements.
A time charter in merchant shipping means an agreement to charter a vessel with a crew for a certain time. Within its framework, the shipowner, for a rent, provides the charterer with a vessel and the services of crew members for use for a certain period of time for the transportation of goods or other purposes of merchant shipping.
Qatar needs more gas carriers as the country plans to increase the annual production capacity of the Northern field from the current 77 million tons to 142 million tons of LNG by 2030 to restore leadership in the global market for this resource, Bloomberg reports. Thus, the country plans to increase LNG production by 85% by 2030.
In recent years, Australian and American projects have allowed the two countries to increase LNG production to such an extent that their exports are almost equal to those of Qatar.
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