Asia expands LNG terminals for bigger ships

Seoul: Asian utilities led by Korea Gas Corp, the world's biggest liquefied natural gas buyer, are expanding import terminals to receive the world's biggest tankers and meet soaring demand for the fuel.

Korea Gas's terminals at Incheon and Pyongtaek are ready to receive the new Q-Flex and Q-Max ships, investor relations manager I.K. Kim said by phone from Seongnam, South Korea. Tokyo Electric Power Co will complete a study by April 2008 to upgrade the Futtsu terminal, spokesman Daiki Ohashi said.

At least 10 other Asian terminals are being adapted after Qatar, the world's largest LNG producer, ordered 45 of the bigger tankers from South Korean shipyards.

The vessels carry more than 200,000 cubic metres each, against 145,000 on standard tankers. They are as long as 345 metres, about three football fields, or 20 per cent more than a typical carrier.

"We had to rush through the expansion project because suppliers tend to use larger carriers at new LNG projects," Chubu Electric Power Co's spokesman Hirotaka Iwase said. Chubu Electric is expanding berths by 2010 at the Chita and Kawagoe LNG terminals in Ise bay in central Japan.

India's Petronet LNG Ltd. may be ready for larger tankers by 2010, Managing Director Prosad Dasgupta said on December 4.

A 25-year contract with Qatar for as much as 3 million tons a year of the fuel will start in 2008, the company's Web site said.

Qatar and partners ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Conoco-Phillips are building the world's biggest LNG production lines to lower output costs in the Middle East nation. The ventures are tapping the North Field, which extends into neighbouring Iran, where it is known as South Pars, comprising the world's biggest single natural gas deposit.

By January 2008, Korean shipbuilders are scheduled to deliver eight Q-Flex tankers capable of carrying a maximum 216,000 cubic meters each, Russell Barling, a spokesman for Lloyd's Register, said.