Gulf Energy Marine (GEM) is bucking the recent trend of canceling new ship orders and has taken delivery of the first of six new vessels scheduled for delivery this year from Korea’s Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD).
The Middle East’s largest independent commercial product tanker operator has named the vessel Gulf Muttrah and the IMO II-N2 type 46,000dwt vessel is the 12th in GEM’s fleet.
“With Gulf Muttrah’s delivery, another high quality vessel from HMD, we are achieving all the targets set for 2009,” CEO Ahmed Essa Hareb Al Falahi, said.
“As the first of six new GEM vessels scheduled for delivery from HMD this year, we continue to be on the course of providing the market with safe, reliable and environment-conscious tonnage,” he added.
Al Falahi also said that GEM was very happy with the standard of both the quality and safety of the vessel that HMD delivered and that these standards were “for the benefit of our customers, the environment and our staff.”
The Dubai-based company also has on order two Aframax vessels from Samsung Heavy Industries with a capacity of 114,700dwt. The vessels are capable of carrying both clean petroleum products and dirty products such as crude and fuel oil, and are scheduled for delivery in 2011.
GEM is a joint venture partnership between Dubai’s Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), the Oman Oil Company (OOC) and Thales of France under the UAE Offsets program.
