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Pacific Carriers will be taking delivery of the first of its 87,000 dwt
shallow draft post panamax bulkers in early April.
The Future 87 design was developed with IHI shipyard in Japan and the first
in a series of five vessels will be delivered on April 5.
The ships will be placed under PCL's Malaysian subsidiary Malaysian Bulk
Carriers.
The 87,000 dwt ship has a beam of 36.5m and length of 229m still enabling it
to trade to ports such as Kamsar.
The vessel is a seven hold, seven hatch design increased from the usual five
hold, five hatch design of such post panamax bulkers.
Qatar may soon decide on the most expensive orders the shipping industry has
ever known.
The country’s Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said of his
liquefied natural gas intentions: “We plan to order 70 ships — big ones that
have never been built before — with a size of 200,000 cubic metres plus.
“The total cost will be more than $15bn within a five- to six-year term and
all the ships will come from Korea.”
The plan is to have 70 large LNG ships ordered by 2010, according to Qatari
embassy officials in Seoul, worth more than US$15bn and far more than the
original 44 outlined last year.
Qatar may in fact look to have a total of 90 ships completed by 2012,
largely coming from the QatarGas Four project in association with Shell. |
