The LNG Market

By David Bull, Consultant, Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd, UK

The past year has witnessed major developments for the LNG shipping market, with a record number of vessels ordered and delivered and continued development in vessel size and propulsion equipment for newbuildings.

2005 is set to be just as dramatic, with a total of 21 vessels scheduled to be delivered this year, totaling 2.9m cu.m. The size of the orderbook has been steadily growing and has now surpassed 100 vessels to be delivered through 2008. Figure 1 shows the orderbook for 2005 onwards.

However, the healthy state of the orderbook may not translate into short-term gains for the shipping market. With such a large influx of vessels during 2005 – equivalent to approximately 13% of the current fleet in vessel numbers and over 15% in cubic capacity – the short-term result is likely to be vessel over-supply. The effect of this is that there may well be idle or semi-utilised tonnage witnessed throughout the coming year.

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