Affiliate QatarEnergy Trading will charter 43 out of the total 104 ships, making it the single largest one-step ship acquisition program of any single entity in the history of the LNG industry.

QatarEnergy entered time charter party (TCP) agreements with four international shipowners for 19 new liquified natural gas vessels on Sunday, bumping up its fleet expansion programme to 104 vessels.

Signed in Doha at the energy company’s headquarters, the agreements are part of the second ship-owner tender under QatarEnergy’s historic LNG fleet expansion programme, the Qatari company said in a press release.

A TCP stipulates that a shipowner leases a fully equipped and manned vessel for a fixed period to a charterer.

“Today’s signings form a significant milestone in QatarEnergy’s LNG fleet expansion programme, as it marks the conclusion of the conventional sizes vessels portion of the programme, bringing the total number of ships for which we have signed TCPs to 104 vessels,” Saad Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs, said.

The agreements cover the operation of six vessels from CMES LNG Carrier Investment, six vessels from Singapore’s Shandong Marine Energy, and three from MISC Berhad. 

The 15 vessels construction will take place at Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, whereas the four remaining will be constructed at Hanwha Ocean in the same country.

The last four vessel operations will fall under the joint venture of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. and Hyundai Glovis Co. Ltd. 

The vessels have a capacity of 174,000 cubic meters each.

“The careful shipowner selection process followed a detailed and rigorous global tender, signifying QatarEnergy’s commitment to expanding its fleet of modern LNG carriers in collaboration with world-class shipowners and in an open and transparent manner,” Al-Kaabi, who is also QatarEnergy’s president and CEO, said.

In 2022, the Qatari company concluded the first phase of its fleet expansion project by signing long-term TCPs for the charter and operation of 60 LNG ships.

QatarEnergy’s affiliate, QatarEnergy Trading, will charter 43 out of the total 104 ships, making it “the single largest one-step ship acquisition program of any single entity in the history of the LNG industry.”

The project aims to meet Qatar’s future requirements under its North Field Expansion Project and the Golden Pass LNG export projects.

“This is an important undertaking that will enable QatarEnergy to continue delivering cleaner energy to the world safely and reliably,” Al-Kaabi noted.

The multi-billion North Field project comes under Qatar’s LNG endeavours and is split into the North Field East (NFE), North Field South (NFS), and North Field West.

NFE is set to ramp up Qatar’s LNG production from 77 to 110 mtpa by 2025, as the NFS will increase the production capacity from 110 to 126 mtpa by 2026.

On February 25, QatarEnergy announced a new LNG expansion project, North Field West. The expansion would boost the local LNG production to 142 mtpa before the end of 2030.

Meanwhile, Golden Pass LNG has a production capacity of at least 18 million tonnes per annum and is set to begin its first production by the end of 2024.

In October 2022, QatarEnergy Trading and ExxonMobil signed an agreement stipulating the former would “independently offtake and market their respective proportionate equity shares” of LNG in the U.S. project.

In 2016, affiliates of QatarEnergy and ExxonMobil established a joint venture Ocean LNG Limited to offtake and market the production at the Texas gas entity.