Top three shipyards in LNG bonanza

The world?s three leading shipbuilders are reportedly about to secure multimillion-dollar orders to build 16 of the world’s largest LNG carriers for Qatar. Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and a consortium formed by Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries will each construct eight of the 200,000 cubic metre gas tankers which are estimated to cost $216 million apiece making the total contract worth $3.4 billion. The official announcement of the contract winners will be made next month.

The Hyundai-Samsung consortium, the first alliance between these two shipbuilding giants, was formed under an agreement that the two companies will each build half of the ships ordered. The consortium competes with Daewoo, the world’s top builder of LNG carriers.

This announcement follows an earlier contract award by the Qatar in July for eight 145,700 cubic metre LNG tankers. Daewoo won seven orders and Samsung took one. In total, Qatar’s LNG tanker orders from Korean shipbuilders are estimated to exceed $5.3 billion. With bidding likely to open by the end of this year for 12 even larger 240,000 cubic metre LNG tankers, competition between Daewoo, Hyundai and Samsung is expected to intensify.

Qatar, with the world’s third-largest gas reserves after Russia and Iran, is working with Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, to be the top exporter of LNG by 2010, beating Russia.