Golar Deploys Two ’70s Carriers
Bermuda’s Golar LNG Ltd., the operator of liquefied natural gas ships [LNG], took full ownership of a 35-year-old tanker and reactivated another built two years earlier as charter rates rise to new records.
Buying the remaining 50 percent stake in the “Gandria”, built in 1977, from a Bluewater Energy Services BV affiliate cost $19.5 million, Hamilton, Bermuda-based Golar said today [Jan. 23] in a statement. Golar also said it will reactivate the 1975-built “Hilli” by the end of March after $15 million of improvements at Keppel Shipyard Ltd. in Singapore.
Rents for LNG carriers have surged amid a shortage of the vessels and increased demand. Analysts estimate daily earnings for modern ships hauling single-voyage cargoes will average $170,000 this year.
The “Gandria” and “Hilli” will secure “additional earnings growth for our company in the next quarters while we are waiting for our first newbuildings to come out in 2013,” Doug Arnell, Golar’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Golar has received bids to charter the “Hilli”, according to the statement. The company said it will decide “within the next few weeks” whether the “Gandria”, which has been out of service since September 2008, will be used for trading, storage or conversion to a facility that returns LNG to a gaseous state.
