On December 12, Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), named and delivered the Emei, a 174,000 m3 large-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier, nine and a half months ahead of the contract date. With this delivery, Hudong-Zhonghua not only set a new record of delivering six LNG carriers in one year, realizing the first goal of the LNG capacity doubling strategy, but also marked the company’s ahead of schedule in completing the ship delivery task for the year 2023.
Emei” is the first vessel built by Hudong-Zhonghua together with China Shipbuilding Trading Co. Ltd (CSTC) for the second phase of COSCO Shipping PetroChina International LNG shipping project, and the fourth large-scale LNG vessel to be delivered after the Shaolin, Wudang and Kunlun vessels in the first phase of the project. It is especially noteworthy that it has also set a number of firsts and continues to write new records.
The total construction period of the vessel is 17 months and 8 days, which is the shortest period in the history of Hudong-Zhonghua for the construction of large LNG carriers. The ship was docked and delivered in 11 months, setting a new record of delivery in the same year of docking. Meanwhile, the ship’s construction quality and speed are among the world’s leading. With this, the company has set a new record of delivering a total of six LNG carriers in one year.
“Emei” is a mainstream large-scale LNG carrier in the world today, which is independently developed and designed by Hudong-Zhonghua with full intellectual property rights. The vessel has an overall length of 295 meters, a beam of 45 meters, a depth of 26.25 meters and a speed of 19.5 knots. It is classed by American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and China Classification Society (CCS).
The vessel adopts the latest generation of dual-fuel low-speed propulsion power system, equipped with advanced environmental protection devices, and the daily fuel consumption is within 100 tons. It can meet the strictest standards of the International Maritime Organization in both gas and oil modes, and has many features such as low evaporation rate, low energy consumption, high reliability, high environmental protection, high versatility, and excellent economy. Especially, the ship has good ship-shore compatibility, flexible route adaptability, reliable berthing at most of the world’s land-based shore stations, and also has the function of ship-to-ship sea trans-berthing and transportation.
Hudong-Zhonghua said that it will further maintain in-depth communication and friendly cooperation with all parties, and build the subsequent vessels of the COSCO Shipping PetroChina International LNG shipping project with high quality and high efficiency with the highest standards and strictest requirements as always, so as to make the project a classic case of cooperation between state-owned enterprises.
According to statistics, Hudong-Zhonghua completed and delivered 17 vessels, which is 106% of the annual plan. Among them, the proportion of medium and high-end ship types has reached over 90%, and the product transformation and upgrading has achieved stage-by-stage results.
At present, the upgraded 23,000 TEU dual-fuel-powered ultra-large container ships, the world’s first 13,000 TEU dual-fuel-powered large container ships and a number of other new ship types are under construction. Especially, 15 LNG carriers are under construction simultaneously. In the next five years, Hudong-Zhonghua will deliver nearly 50 LNG carriers, making new and greater contributions to the country’s “double carbon” strategy and global green shipping.
Hudong-Zhonghua is going to implement the strategy of doubling LNG production capacity in 2023. On November 8, the company’s LNG carrier industry capacity enhancement project – the new invar production workshop was completed and put into production. It is also the only workshop in China that can support the NO.96 type LNG carriers with the special invar process. This has enabled Hudong-Zhonghua to form a new advantage of centralized production of LNG ship insulation box, invar prefabricated parts, cryogenic pipe module and other specialized supporting industries, which further strengthens the foundation for the multiplication of LNG production capacity.
