Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has received an order for 10 LNG fuel-powered crude oil carriers worth 751.3 billion won, winning more than half of this year's order target.
SHI said on Aug. 19 that it has won an order for 10 Aframax-class (113,000 DWT) LNG fuel-powered crude oil carriers from a shipping company in the Oceania region for a total of 751.3 billion won.
The ships are scheduled to be delivered sequentially by January 2022. With the latest order, SHI will achieve 54 percent of this year's order target of 7.8 billion dollars in a snap.
SHI is going to apply 'S-Fugas', which is an LNG fuel supply system developed by itself, to ships that it has received orders. The S-Fugas is a system that vaporizes minus 163 degrees of liquefied LNG and supplies it to the vessel's main engine or generator.
By using LNG as a propulsion fuel, SHI explains that it can reduce 99 percent of sulfur oxide, 85 percent of nitrogen oxide and 25 percent of carbon dioxide compared to conventional diesel fuel use.
LNG meets the International Maritime Organization (IMO)'s regulation on sulfur oxide emissions, which is scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2020, and is considered a realistic countermeasure to replace high sulfur oil. In the future, shippers will have to drastically cut their sulfur oxide content from 3.5 percent to less than 0.5 percent.
KOTRA predicted that the LNG fuel-powered ship market will account for 60.3 percent ($108.5 billion) of the world's newly placed ship market in 2025.
In response, SHI has secured differentiated quality competitiveness in the LNG fuel propulsion vessel field by applying various types and materials of LNG fuel tanks and engine (ME-GI, X-DF) since 2012. SHI has recorded orders for a total of 20 LNG fuel propulsion vessels (excluding LNG carriers) including this contract.
"We will continue to lead the eco-friendly ship market by increasing our competitive edge in orders by reducing costs through continuous technology development and localization," an SHI official said.