Qatar’s 200-Tanker ‘Floating Pipeline’ To Herald New Era Of LNG Shipping

31 Jan 2025 Issue: 68 / 5 By: James Marriott

With the first ships of QatarEnergy’s 128-vessel orderbook joining its 69-ship fleet, the company is progressing its ambitious plan to scale up its ‘floating pipeline’. With LNG tanker additions set to outpace global liquefaction capacity gains the market appears well supplied.

Since 2020 QatarEnergy has been pursuing a massive shipbuilding program which has grown to a total of 128 new LNG tankers to be delivered by around 2030. Currently, state-led listed firm Nakilat owns a fleet of 69 vessels which are chartered to QatarEnergy. Nakilat has already been assigned 34 of the newbuild vessels, but this time around QatarEnergy is sharing the allocations among a range of firms.

The first seven of the new vessels have now entered service, under an agreement QatarEnergy reached for a JV of Japan’s Mitsui OSK (MOL) and China’s Cosco to own and operate the vessels. The first of these seven was named ‘Rex Tillerson’ after the former Exxon CEO who played a key role in the development of Qatar’s LNG sector, and loaded its first cargo at Ras Laffan in October. Four more have since loaded their first cargo, leaving two more to join the fleet in the coming weeks. (CONTINUED - 898 WORDS)