China aiming at Q-Flex LNG tankers

Marine Design and Research Institute of China is planning to build a Q-Flex LNG tanker with a capacity of about 215,000m3 said Zhu Jianzhang, a marketing official with the state research unit. Qatar had ordered 45 of the world’s biggest tankers from South Korean shipyards including Samsung Heavy Industries.

Chinese shipyards recently completed three conventional LNG carriers of about 145,000m3 and are currently building two more to transport the LNG to terminals on China’s east coast. The country’s shipyards are stepping up the rivalry with Japanese and South Korean builders to supply ships that will meet rising fuel demand in China. “China will increase its market share of LNG tanker-building when more import terminals start operation as the government aims to rely on homemade vessels for imports of LNG,’ said Kong Fanhua, a senior researcher at China Ocean Shipping Group Co.

‘In the short term, China won’t be a threat to Korea in LNG tanker-building.’ China has agreed to buy 5 million tonnes a year of LNG from Qatar, and is asking for more gas, Qatar’s Oil Minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said on Monday. China’s first domestically built tanker, Dapeng Sun, completed its maiden voyage to southern China’s Guangdong province from Australia in May last year. The vessel took more than four years to design and build compared with 15 months for Samsung to build the world’s biggest LNG tanker, which can hold almost twice the amount of LNG as conventional sized tankers.

‘China has accumulated experience and technology after building three LNG vessels so there won’t be big problems to build a Q-Flex,’ Kong said. Qatar, the world’s biggest LNG producer, has ordered 31 tankers of 209,000m3 capacity, known as the Q-Flex, and 14 Q-Max vessels of 266,000m3 from three South Korean shipyards, i.e. Hyundai Heavy, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy.

The bigger LNG tankers have a re-liquefaction plant that returns evaporating gas back to the storage tanks, maximising the fuel cargo at the discharge port. Traditional tankers typically lose 0.15% of cargo a day during a voyage.