[LNG Prime/July 31, 2023] South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean, previously known as DSME, will build one liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker for about $260 million under a new contract.

Hanwha Ocean said in a filling to the stock exchange on Monday it will construct the LNG carrier for an unidentified owner in Asia and deliver the vessel by February 2027.

Also, the contract has a price tag of 332.2 billion won or about $260 million.

Hanwha Ocean did not provide any additional information.

This is the fifth LNG carrier order for Hanwha Ocean this year and the first since the shipbuilder changed its name in May.

Prior to this deal, the shipbuilder secured an order to build one 174,000-cbm LNG carrier for Japan’s MOL in February and one vessel in April, and it will build two LNG tankers for Greece’s Maran Gas under a deal revealed in March.

Shipbuilding sources told LNG Prime that MOL could also be behind this latest LNG carrier order but we could not confirm this by the time this article was published.

      * The TradeWinds reports Japanese shipowner Mitsui OSK Lines is being named as having signed an LNG carrier newbuilding at South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean

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Besides these five LNG carriers worth about $1.3 billion, Hanwha Ocean won orders for four more vessels.

The orders are worth about $1.47 billon and Hanwha Ocean set a target of $6.98 billion this year.

Last year, Hanwha Ocean set a record for the largest number of orders for LNG carriers in a year since its establishment, surpassing its yearly record of 37 LNG carriers in 2014.

The shipbuilder won orders for a total of 38 LNG carriers in 2022.