Qatar’s LNG Fleet Expansion a Boost for Global Shipping Capacity

On February 6, QatarEnergy sealed a new deal with South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) to build a fleet of 15 LNG carriers (174,000 cubic meters) to be delivered by October 2028. The $3.35 billion contract is considered the biggest order ever received by the Korean shipbuilder in its 50-year history. Another contract, worth $ 3.9 billion, was struck between the Middle Eastern LNG giant and South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) last September to build 17 ultra-modern 174,000 cubic meters (cbm) LNG carriers. And just last month, QatarEnergy reportedly struck a contract, worth about $2.5 billion, with China’s shipbuilder Hudong Zhonghua for the construction of eight Q-Max vessels. The Chinese shipbuilder will construct ultra-large Q-max vessels with a capacity of 271,000 cubic meters (cbm), making them the world’s largest, and they are scheduled to be delivered between 2028 and 2029.

These newbuilding orders (40 in total)  will support QatarEnergy’s plans to increase LNG production capacity from the North Field LNG expansion project (North Field East and North Field South) that will raise Qatar’s total capacity from 77 to 126 mtpa by 2027. The contracts with Chinese and Korean shipbuilders, almost complete the second phase of QatarEnergy’s fleet expansion program, and the  EOA understands that the LNG giant producer may order more vessels to bring the total contracted orders to more than 100 LNG carriers in the future.

Under its first phase, QatarEnergy contracted to build 60 new LNG carriers with several Korean shipbuilders (Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean, Daewoo Shipbuilding, and Marine Engineering), as well as China’s shipbuilder Hudong-Zhonghua (see Table-1 below).