DSME: world’s first Arctic LNG carrier completes ice trials

South Korean shipbuilding giant Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) said the world’s first ice class LNG carrier, Christophe de Margerie, completed the ice trials in the Arctic Ocean.

DSME said that the 173,600-cbm LNG carrier, built under a US$320 million contract with the Russian shipping company Sovcomflot, initially left the shipyard in November last year.

In January this year, the vessel docked at the Zeebrugge LNG terminal for a series of scheduled operations that included cooling down its cargo tanks and loading a small volume of LNG before setting sail to the Yamal peninsula in Siberia to undertake an ice performance testing program.

The vessel has been designed and built for the Yamal LNG project to perform year-round navigation through the Arctic to its destination markets. Its ability to proceed through ice up to 2.1 m thick has been tested during the commissioning phase completed over the course of last month in the Arctic Ocean, DSME said.

It will be deployed to serve the 20-year contract signed by Yamal Trade, a unit of Yamal LNG, and Fluxys LNG for transshipment of up to 8 million tons of LNG per year at the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, to support year-round LNG deliveries from the Yamal Peninsula to Asian-Pacific markets.

A fleet of 15 similar vessels will be serving the Yamal LNG project and will call on a regular basis at the Zeebrugge LNG terminal to perform transshipment operations to conventional LNG carriers.

LNG World News Staff