Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, China’s only shipyard having track records of building large LNG carriers, released a plan to double its building capacity of LNG carrier in four years.

Song Wei, chief of ship machinery research and development, said during China International LNG held in Beijing, China, Hudong-Zhonghua will be able to build seven to eight 174,000 cbm LNG carriers annually, which is more than twice as many as current capacity of building two to three vessels a year.

Also, in terms of capacity and propulsion of vessels, the Chinese yard was competitive against its Korean rivals last year, he added. Hudong-Zhonghua is said to be having 14 LNG carriers on its orderbook, which accounts for 10% of global market share.

The 14 newbuildings comprise six 174,000cbm tankers (worth $1.5bn) ordered from a consortium of Sinopec, China Shipping Development and Mitsui OSK Lines, two 172K units from Sinopec, another two 172K units from PetroChina (Chevron) with the rest four 174K LNG carriers of China National Offshore Oil Corp (BG Group).

Song mentioned that as demand is growing for LNG carrier with order rates speeding up, Chinese design and technology to build such vessels is also maturing.

Meanwhile, Hudong-Zhonghua is a state-run shipyard subsidiary of CSSC. It started research and development of LNG carrier in 1998. The yard has delivered total six large LNG carriers so far with currently developing 220K LNG carrier, 270K LNG-FSRU, 220K LNG-FPSO, Ship-to-Ship LNG Bunkering vessel and so on.