The last 18 orders for the world's largest LNG carriers under Qatar's "100 Ships Plan" have finally officially landed, and this large order worth 40 billion yuan was taken by Hudong-Zhonghua, which refreshed the historical record of a single order in the global shipbuilding industry in one fell swoop. So far, the total number of new LNG ships in the "100 Ships Plan" has reached 122.
18 LNG carriers of 271,000 cubic meters! Hudong-Zhonghua won the world's largest single shipbuilding order
On April 29, China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and QatarEnergy held a signing ceremony for the construction of 18 Q-Max liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, the world's largest 271,000 cubic meters. The project marks the R&D, design and construction of China's LNG carriers from large-scale to ultra-large, and the R&D and design capabilities of high-end ships are moving towards the world's leading goal.
This is part of the second phase of Qatar's "100 Ships Plan", with an estimated cost of up to US$305-310 million per new ship, and a total value of US$5.58 billion (about 40.437 billion yuan) for 18 ships. This is not only the largest LNG ship order undertaken by China's shipbuilding industry, but also the world's largest single shipbuilding order.
At the beginning of this year, it was reported that QatarEnergy had placed an order for the first batch of eight 271,000 cubic meter Q-Max LNG carriers in Hudong-Zhonghua, and the new ships were scheduled to be delivered from 2028 to 2029. Later, sources revealed that QatarEnergy intends to expand the number of Q-Max ship orders to 18, higher than the previous market expectation of 16 ships, and these 18 orders will be taken by Hudong-Zhonghua.
It is reported that QatarEnergy has identified the owners of the 18 new ships, of which 10 will be ordered by Qatar's state-owned natural gas transportation company Nakilat, Shandong Marine Energy (Singapore) will order 3 ships, China Liquefied Natural Gas Transportation (Holdings) Co., Ltd. (CLNG), a joint venture between China Merchants Group and COSCO Shipping Group, will order 2 ships, and the other 3 ships will be ordered by COSCO Shipping Group and Mitsui Merchant Lines. QatarEnergy will sign long-term charter parties with the relevant shipowners.
The Q-Max vessels will be independently designed and built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation. In September last year, Hudong-Zhonghua's 271,000 square meter ultra-large LNG carrier design was also awarded the Approval-in-Principle (AIP) certificate issued by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Lloyd's Register (LR), Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and the French Bureau of Shipping (BV), which is the largest LNG carrier developed and designed in the world so far.
With a total length of 344 meters, a width of 53.6 meters, a depth of 27.2 meters, and a design draft of 12 meters, the vessel adopts a dual-fuel low-speed engine propulsion system and a NO96 Super+ enclosure system. It adopts a 5-cabin scheme with a compact scale, with the world's largest cabin capacity of 271,000 cubic meters, which is 57% higher than the carrying capacity of a conventional 174,000-square-meter large LNG carrier; adopts a multi-objective optimized double stern fin alignment, which has excellent rapidity; the ship is equipped with the latest generation of cargo containment system, with a lower evaporation rate, and the energy consumption of cargo transportation per ton of nautical miles is 9.9% lower than that of a 174,000-square-meter LNG carrier; Hull stress monitoring and anti-collision system to achieve multiple guarantees, with better safety and reliability, equipped with a powerful reliquefaction system and axial reverse booster system, flexible control, and carbon intensity index (CII) is 23% lower than that of 174,000 cubic meters LNG carriers, which can flexibly match various operating sections of different routes, and its diversified and optimized draft and stowage design can reach more than 70 shore stations on all continents around the world, covering major mainstream routes, with excellent ship-to-shore compatibility.
Together with the latest 18 orders, Hudong-Zhonghua has already undertaken orders for a total of 30 LNG carriers under QatarEnergy's "100 Ships Plan", which is actually far more than the number of slipways reserved by QatarEnergy's 2020 agreement. According to foreign media news at the time, according to the amount of the agreement, Qatar reserved 16 LNG ships of 174,000 cubic meters in Hudong-Zhonghua to build a slipway.
In order to meet the growing demand for LNG ship construction, Hudong-Zhonghua has been vigorously expanding its production capacity to win more new ship orders. Hudong-Zhonghua has launched the second phase of the Changxing Shipbuilding Base project in 2022, which undertakes the strategic task of doubling the LNG production capacity of Hudong-Zhonghua and is scheduled to be completed at the beginning of this year, when the production capacity of Hudong-Zhonghua LNG carriers will be greatly released, from the previous year to build 5~6 ships to 10~12 ships.
Excluding the latest 18 orders, Clarkson's data shows that so far Hudong-Zhonghua LNG ships have a total of 41 orders, second only to South Korea's Hanwha Marine (77 ships), Samsung Heavy Industries (74 ships) and Hyundai Heavy Industries Ulsan Shipyard (68 ships), ranking first in China and fourth in the world.
A total of 122 ships, Qatar through the "100 ships plan" in China and South Korea four shipyards to order a large number of ships
Together with Hudong-Zhonghua's new orders, the number of orders for the second phase of QatarEnergy's "100 Ships Plan" will reach 62, including 44 conventional LNG carriers of 174,000 cubic meters from South Korea's three major shipbuilders, and 18 271,000 cubic meters of the world's largest LNG carriers from Hudong-Zhonghua, exceeding the 60 ships in the first phase of 2022.
It is understood that Qatar is the world's largest LNG producer and exporter, and Qatar is currently fully promoting the North Field expansion project, planning to increase LNG production capacity from the current 77 million tons to 126 million tons per year after 2027. In order to meet the gas field expansion plan, QatarEnergy also needs to expand its LNG fleet, so it launched the "100 Ships Plan" and signed agreements with four Chinese and South Korean shipping companies, initially planning to order a total of 151 LNG ships in three phases.
In 2020, QatarEnergy successively signed LNG ship construction project agreements with three major shipping companies, Hudong-Zhonghua and South Korea. According to the plan at that time, South Korea's three major shipbuilders would each build 45 LNG carriers, a total of 135 ships, and Hudong-Zhonghua would build 16 ships. In 2022, a total of 66 orders for the first phase of the "100 Ships Plan" will come into effect, and the three major Korean shipbuilders will receive a total of 54 orders, including 17 ships from HD Korea Shipbuilding & Marine, 18 ships from Samsung Heavy Industries, 19 ships from Hanwha Marine, and 12 ships from Hudong-Zhonghua.
In October 2023, the second phase of the "100 Ships Plan" was launched, and HD Korea Shipbuilding & Marine received the first batch of 17 LNG carriers in the second phase. In February this year, Samsung Heavy Industries received an order for 15 LNG carriers of 174,000 cubic meters. In March, Hanwha Marine (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding) signed an order for 12 LNG carriers of 174,000 cubic meters, marking the completion of a total of 44 LNG carriers from Korean shipbuilders in the second phase of the "100 Ships Plan".
Earlier this year, QatarEnergy signed charter contracts with a number of shipowners for 44 conventional LNG carriers from South Korean shipbuilders following shipbuilding agreements with shipyards. Among them, Qatari LNG carrier operator Nakilat was the first to secure charter contracts for up to 25 vessels, including all 17 vessels built by Korea Shipbuilding & Marine and 8 ships built by Hanwha Marine.
In March, QatarEnergy signed four more charters with CMES LNG Carrier Investment, a subsidiary of China Merchants Shipping, Shandong Marine Energy (Singapore), Japan's Kawasaki Kisen, South Korea's Hyundai Glovis and Malaysia's National Shipping Company (MISC), for Qatar's 15 LNG carriers in South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries and four in Hanwha Marine (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding).
Under the contract, CMES LNG Carrier Investment and Shandong Marine Energy (Singapore) will each operate six LNG carriers, while MISC will operate another three, all of which will be built by Samsung Heavy Industries. The four vessels built by Hanwha Marine will be operated by a joint venture between Kawasaki Kisen and Hyundai Glovis.
With the signing of the final order for Hudong-Zhonghua, QatarEnergy has ordered 122 LNG carriers through the "100 Ships Program". It is worth mentioning that at present, 99 LNG carriers in the "100 Ships Plan" use the main engine authorized by WinGD, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Group, which further demonstrates the continuous deepening of China Shipbuilding Group's construction of LNG carrier industry chain and supply chain, and also boosts the strategic partnership between China Shipbuilding Group and Qatar Energy to a new level, promotes more extensive cooperation in the energy field between China and Qatar, and builds a long-term and stable energy cooperative relationship.
Qatar is very optimistic about the outlook for LNG demand in the coming decades. In February, QatarEnergy announced a new expansion of the Northern Field, North Field West, which plans to increase Qatar's LNG capacity by nearly 85% by the end of 2030, increasing production from 77 million tonnes per year to 142 million tonnes per year.
Currently, QatarEnergy has signed supply agreements with a number of multinational companies, including TotalEnergies, Shell, Petroitalia, Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corporation, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.