Officials from major Asian LNG carrier shipyards at Gastech 2009 have told ArabianOilandGas.com that while 2009 has been a quiet year so far, they are confident that 2010 will see an upturn in orders, especially from clients looking for floating storage and regasification units (FSRU).
Chan Won Moon, who works for the shipbuilding department of South Korean shipbuilding giant, Hyundai Heavy Industries, (HHI) spoke optimistically of the LNG build sector.
“HHI are the world’s biggest shipbuilder and enjoy 15% of new build market share,” he said. “At the moment the new building market as a whole is not really active, but the LNG industry is different. This week we have had a lot of interest from clients who are interested in FSRUs. It’s a new concept, but we think that it is going to be a very popular product for us,” Won Moon added.
When asked whether the Middle East was providing HHI with any significant orders Won Moon said: “The Middle East market is not too busy at the moment. Our orders are coming from Australia, West Africa and South East Asia.”
Sin-Young Kim of Hanjin Heavy Industries, another South Korean shipbuilder, said that Hanjin was focusing on the development of its floating LNG (FLNG) vessels.
“This year has been slower than usual, but the gas sector is better than others at the moment,” Kim said. “We are concentrating on FLNG vessels as they are proving to be very popular with our clients. They reduce the cost of processing gas and we believe that this is going to be a massive growth area in the future.”
Kim said that Hanjin had a Middle East client base in the oil and gas sector, but could not reveal which owners were ordering at the moment.
Toshikazu Yamamoto, who works for Japanese shipbuilder Kawasaki, said that while it has been a quiet period for shipbuilding over the past nine months, he is confident that 2010 will see a flurry of new orders as gas producers look to hit their five-year growth targets.
“The recession hit the shipbuilders first,” Yamamoto said. “As soon as our clients knew the slowdown was happening they delayed their orders immediately. However, a large LNG carrier takes anything up to 36 months to build so if gas producers want to hit the targets they have set for 2014, they will have to think about placing orders for carriers, FLNG or FSRU vessels within the next year,” he added.
