Platts: US shale boom writes a tale of two emerging classes of gas carriers
Growing natural gas liquids production spurred by the US shale gas boom has stoked interest in new classes of ships to move ethane and LPG across oceans: very large ethane carriers and ultra large gas carriers.
The first VLEC orders have been placed and could keep shipyards busy for years, even as more are built to move cheap US ethane to Asia and Europe. But the time for ULGCs is yet to come.
After years of uncertainty because of economics, paltry demand and ballooning supply, the future is looking bright for ethane as appetite emerges in Europe and Asia, and with it the need for longer-haul and larger vessels.
India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. is paving the way with a $723 million contract in July to build six vessels of 87,000 cubic meters each, the world’s first VLECs. These will be built by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries and are slated for delivery by the end of January 2017. They would be able to move 1.5 million mt/year of ethane from Reliance’s US shale joint ventures to a cracker being built at the Jamnagar complex. MORE
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