HD Hyundai announced on Oct. 26 that HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE), a shipbuilding intermediate holding company, has signed a contract with Qatar Energy for the construction of 17 144,000-cubic-meter LNG carriers.
Each of the LNG carriers ordered will be 299 meters long, 46.4 meters wide, and 26.5 meters tall. The vessels will be built at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) in Ulsan, Korea. They will be delivered one by one through the second half of 2029.
The contract is worth about 5.2511 trillion won (US$3.8676 billion). It is the largest order ever for a Korean shipbuilder, surpassing a 3.9593-trillion-won order with Samsung Heavy Industries in July. Work to build them is equivalent to half a year’s work for HD HHI.
This order raises the proportion of LNG carrier orders to Korea in all global LNG carrier orders from 74 percent to 81 percent in 2023.
Qatar plans to scale up its LNG production from 77 million tons to 126 million per year by 2027. Korean shipbuilders’ LNG carriers are considered to be the best in the world. This contract is expected to lead to additional orders to other Korean shipbuilders such as Hanwha Ocean and Samsung Heavy Industries.