LNG Shipping

choi

Robert Wright, Wave of Enthusiasm for Liquefied Gas Sweeps Shipowners; Transport; Tanker bosses appear convinced there is now a market in the fuel. Financial Times, Dec 5, 2011.

Quote:

"The Business was written off as expensive, dull and unlikely to provide an adequate return. Nearly all the gas moved on ships signed on charters of 20 or even 25 years with energy companies, which offered [tanker] owners only marginal returns and onerous conditions.

"Yet, in May this year, [Gothenburg-based] Stena Bulk agreed to buy three LNG carriers from Taiwan's TMT Group for $700m and has since ordered four more tankers.

"Mr [Ulf] Ryder[, CEO of Stena Bulk] is convinced the market, whose short-term charter rates for carriers have risen from an un[rpfitable $30,000 a day to a lucrative $125,000, has changed permanently from the days when the only opportunies in LNG shipping were in low-return, long-term chartering. 'We didn't want to be in that business,' he says.

"The boom both in availability of gas and demand for it world-wide * * *

""Japan's March earthquake and tsunami, meanwhile, created substantial demand because they have put such a high [rp[prtion of nuclear power stations out of action.

"Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chief executive of Oslo-listed BW Gas, one of the world's biggest owners of LNG tankers, argues that the changes mark only the start of a long-term pick-up in LNG demand. He is particularly excited at the prospect that the US might soon start exporting its cheap gas [and become a net LNG exporter].

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest of the report.
(b) Gothenburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg
(Swedish: Göteborg; the second-largest city in Sweden; founded in 1621 by King Gustavus Adolphus; section 1 Name)

(c) Regarding TMT Group.
(i) 小檔案／台灣海陸運輸公司ＴＭＴ; 台灣海運界怪咖. 中央社. June 27, 2010.
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2010/new/jun/27/today-int2-2.htm

(A) 怪咖 (n; 台語): weirdo (It is said "咖-意思來自於英文的cast.")
(B) 什麼是怪咖?
http://tw.knowledge.yahoo.com/question/question?qid=1205072900488
(C) There was so such term when I was in Taiwan (I left in 1984), so it must be a recent invention. In fact I did not know of it until today.
(ii) TMT: Today Makes Tomorrow
www.tmtship.com
(iii) TMT's Liberian-flagged ship, called A Whale, offered up its service (not free of course) to BP's Gulf oil spill in June, 2010. It needed to prove itself to US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and possibly "a waiver of the Jones Act, which prohibits foreign-flagged vessel and non-U.S. crew working in the US Gulf." The trials did not work out, and ship left without skimming oil.