ICSOT 2006 — DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF NATURAL GAS CARRIERS AND OFFSHORE SYSTEMS

The trend of current LNG newbuildings is that the cargo capacity keeps increasing every year. The shipyard proposal keeps adding the numbers of tank capacity until there is no limit to the membrane LNG carriers. Prior to this phenomenon, the Large LNG Carriers standard designs are limited to 130,000 cbm to 138,000 cbm In 2004, Qatar Gas selected two designs proposed by Hyundai Heavy Industries/Samsung Heavy Industries Consortium and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering to build larger than 200.000cbm capacity LNG Carriers. The contract of the Very Large LNGCs clearly showed that there is no limitation of what is coming to the industry.

The construction of the LNG newbuildings around the world will increase until the Qatar Gas acquisitions of LNG ships settled sometime in 2012. Previously in the past, any LNG newbuildings will be based on a fixed charter contract between the Charterer and the Owner. However, recent trend of the LNG newbuildings is now moving towards the spot charter market and speculative in nature making the newbuildings slots for LNG very tight among the LNGC capable shipyards. In order to become pro—active player in the LNG transportation market and promoting high quality standards in LNGC newbuildings, MISC would like to share the experience gained during supervision of newbuildings of Large LNGC. MISC experience in LNGC newbuildings is further augment by the fad thai most of the newbuildings ordered in the recent years are based the membrane—type insulation rather than other type of insulation like the Moss—type or independent tank—type. In 2004 alone, the big three shipyards in Korea won almost 90 percent of the LNG tanker contracts awarded...