On September 28, NYK signed a contract with Total Gas & Power Chartering Limited (TGPCL), a subsidiary of Total, a leading oil and energy company headquartered in France, the company said in its press release. The contract calls for TGPCL to charter from NYK a newly built liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier for seven years, with an optional extension period of one year. The new vessel will be built by Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. in Korea and is due to be delivered in 2021.
The LNG carrier will be equipped with a WinGD-made dual-fuel slow-speed diesel engine (i.e., X-DF diesel engine) that has superior fuel-consumption efficiency and can operate on marine gas oil or boil off gas stored in the cargo tank. The cargo tank will be a 174,000 cubic meter capacity membrane-type tank that will make use of advanced insulating materials to suppress the boil-off rate (percentage of gas volume that vaporizes during navigation) in the cargo tank. In addition, the new carrier will realize superior efficiency and economical LNG transportation through use of a re-liquefaction system that can use surplus boil-off gas effectively.