Russian natural gas giant Novatek has commissioned six liquid natural gas tankers from South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) with a price tag of $1.7 billion, business news daily Kommersant reported citing sources
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2020) Russian natural gas giant Novatek has commissioned six liquid natural gas tankers from South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) with a price tag of $1.7 billion, business news daily Kommersant reported citing sources.
According to the paper, DSME has earlier informed Seoul's KRX (Korea Exchange) that it had reached a deal with two unnamed European companies for that exact sum, averaging about $283 million per tanker. The shipyard estimated the order will be fulfilled by December 2023.
The newspaper's sources said the order was made through two energy shipping operators, Russia's Sovcomflot and Japan's MOL, for three tankers apiece. These companies will independently operate the tankers under Novatek's stewardship for its arctic natural gas reserves.
The six tankers will join Novatek's prospective 15-tanker fleet as part of its Arctic LNG-2 project to ship orders from its fields in Siberia's far-northern Gulf of Ob. The remainder of the fleet is currently under construction by Russian shipyard Zvezda.
Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson last year asked for permission from President Vladimir Putin to make the orders internationally. Government policy dictates only Russian shipyards may construct the country's tankers, but Mikhelson maintained that demand for new tankers outpaces the nation's shipbuilding capacity, which is already overbooked.
