SEOUL, KOREA - Korea's shipbuilding industry, now groaning under the global shipbuilding downturn, sees drill ship orders, once regarded as a new growth engine, remain sluggish.
The recent decline in drill ship orders is attributable to the massive orders made between 2011 and 2012, plus a decline in development of offshore oil fields resulting from the emergence of shale gas.
So far this year, Samsung Heavy Industries is the only Korean shipyard which succeeded in winning drill ship orders. Excluding the two drill ships won by Samsung Heavy, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering failed to win any order.
After the global merchant ship new-building market slumped due to the global financial crisis in 2009, Korea's major shipyards turned eyes toward offshore plants. In particular, drill ships drew sharp attention as a next-generation growth engine. Drill ship is a high value-added ship with a price ranging from $500 million to $600 million apiece, ten times those of crude tankers.
