Shipbuilder breaks world price record

Two of Korea’s three largest shipbuilders, Samsung Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, said they have won deals to build liquefied natural gas carriers worth almost $2.4 billion.
Samsung Heavy said it will build four ships to carry 266,000 cubic meters of LNG each, the biggest among the orders, for Qatar Gas Transport, the largest LNG shipper in the Middle East. The vessels, priced at $286.4 million each and totaling $1.15 billion, will be delivered by Feb. 15, 2010. The per-vessel price is a global record.
The LNG carrier, standing 27 meters high, 54 meters wide and 345 meters long, will be the same size as a vessel Samsung received an order for in March of last year. At the time, the price of the ship was a record for LNG carriers, but this bid is pricier, said Samsung Heavy, which has the world’s second-largest ship backlog.
Daewoo Shipbuilding said in a separate statement that it won a contract to build five LNG vessels ― this year’s first for the company, which has Korea’s third-biggest backlog. The order for four vessels to carry 211,000 cubic meters of LNG came from Qatar Gas Transport; each will cost around $230 million.
Daewoo said it also won an order from a European ship owner for a 170,000-cubic-meter LNG carrier recently. The five orders will be worth $1.2 billion. Including these new contracts, Daewoo’s ship backlog stands at 39.
Goh Jae-ho, head of the shipping division at Daewoo Shipbuilding, said, “With countries around the world increasingly seeking to develop natural gas, we plan to raise our LNG vessel building capacity from the current 12 to 15 by 2009.” He noted the company would work to develop new ships with greater added value, such as LNG ships suitable for arctic conditions.
Global demand for LNG, a source of energy gradually replacing crude oil, may more than triple from 2004 by 2020, bolstered by rising imports to the United States, according to Royal Dutch Shell, the world’s biggest non-governmental owner of LNG production capacity.
The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade said last year that Korean shipbuilders accounted for 31 percent of the global market, the biggest in the world. In terms of order backlog, or contracts signed up to that date, Korean shipbuilders ― Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Daewoo, Hyundai-Mipo and Hyundai Samho ― took the top five spots, with STX and Hanjin ranking within the top 10.

By Seo Ji-eun Staff Writer [spring@joongang.co.kr]