Qatar orders six LNG ships from Korean shipyards amid expansion plans

QatarEnergy has ordered six LNG ships from two South Korean shipyards, the first batch under a 2020 agreement, as the Gulf state seeks to meet requirements for its North Field expansion plans.

Four vessels were ordered from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and two ships from Samsung Heavy Industries as part of agreements signed in May 2020, QatarEnergy said in a Nov. 7 statement. The company's didn't disclose the cost of the order or timeline for delivery.

"These orders, and those that will follow in the near future, constitute a significant part of our program to expand Qatar's LNG fleet to meet the requirements of our LNG expansion projects, our existing fleet replacement, as well as our LNG trading arm," Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar's minister of state for energy affairs and CEO of QatarEnergy, said in the statement.

The North Field expansion project will boost Qatar's LNG production capacity to 126 million mt/year by 2027 from 77 million mt/year now. Qatar's North Field is the world's largest offshore gas field, which is located in the Persian Gulf. The field is shared with Iran, where it is known as South Pars.

In October, QatarEnergy said it had ordered four new LNG carriers from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group Co. (Hudong), a unit of China State Shipbuilding Corp., its first LNG vessel deal with a shipyard from the Asian country.

The order, whose cost exceeds Qatari Riyals 2.8 billion ($770 million), is part of an April 2020 agreement to reserve LNG ship construction capacity in China to support its North Field gas expansion projects and replace older vessels.

The 2020 deal with Hudong, worth Riyals 11 billion, will see a significant portion of the company's LNG ship construction capacity reserved for QatarEnergy through 2027.