Since many countries signed LNG ships for a long time, some even rented for ten years, before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Europe did not expect that LNG ships were so difficult to rent, so there are few modern large two-stroke LNG ships left, leaving only three-fuel diesel-electric LNG ships with relatively low transportation efficiency. Especially between mid-September and mid-November, Europe is getting closer to the cold winter, and the daily rent of LNG ships has soared to the highest in history of US$105,250, a 124% increase compared to last year.
Russia cut off natural gas from Europe. Europe now has a great demand for two things, one is the electric blanket in Dongguan, China, and the other is the LNG ship that can have a lot of luck.
This has also led to the rapid expansion of the LNG ship market. In the first half of 2022 alone, the orders for LNG ships exceeded 100, with a total order price of up to US$22.4 billion. For example, the single construction cost of a large LNG ship of 170,000 cubic meters has increased to US$240 million. It can be said that whoever masters LNG manufacturing technology will master the commanding heights of the global civil shipbuilding industry, and there are only two players in this field, namely China and South Korea.
There is a heart-wrenching fact that the Korean shipbuilding industry has always looked down on China shipbuilding . Koreans once mocked China for not even knowing what LNG ships are. Europe and Japan are the earliest players in LNG ships. As Western manufacturing industry transfers, South Korea has come from behind and once monopolized the core technology for 40 years and more than 90% of the market.
LNG ship is called a special ship that is more difficult to build than aircraft carrier . If China wants to become a powerful ship manufacturing country, it must break through the access control that South Korea has grasped.
According to data from the British shipbuilding market Clarkson survey company, in the first half of 2022, South Korea received 70% of new shipbuilding orders. From January to August, South Korea received 83 LNG orders worldwide, and the other 30% were taken by China.
South Korea has three major shipbuilding giants - Daewoo Shipyard, Samsung Heavy Industry and Hyundai Holdings Marine Shipbuilding. The orders of these three shipyards are full, and they are basically in the second half of 2026. In the first few years, China can build LNG ships, only Hudong China is the only one in the first few years. However, Jiangnan Shipyard and major ship heavy industry increased production lines after the beginning of this year. In addition, in order to seize market share from the Korean company Tiger's mouth, Chinese shipbuilding companies lowered the unit price by about 15% to 20%.
Results The people from Daewoo Shipyard said this. In 2000, the technical generation difference between China and South Korea was about 10 years. Even if the price of South Korea's ships is high, some international ship companies will still tend to order from South Korea, and only by 2030 can China-made LNG ships be recognized internationally.
Is the fact really what they said? In fact, South Korean ship companies have seriously underestimated the technology and catching-up speed of China's LNG.
First mention, that is, the shortage of natural gas in Europe and the urgent demand for LNG ships have indeed brought a once-in-a-lifetime historical opportunity to the development of China's LNG ships. Hudong Shipyard had only a few orders in the past few years.
But with the explosion of orders by South Korean ship companies, some loyal fans of South Korea can only start placing orders with China. Hudong Shipyard can now get more than 30 orders in a year, and even the unfamous major ship group in China received orders of 2+2 large LNG ships of 175,000 cubic meters in March, becoming the third ship company in China to get orders after Hudong and Jiangnan Shipyards. In fact, not only are Koreans despised it, but foreign companies that handed over the orders to Chinese shipyards also had doubts in their hearts.
Is the LNG ship made in China reliable?
In 1999, South Korea's shipbuilding industry surpassed Japan for the first time and cut 33% of the world's share. Unexpectedly, it defeated Japan and met a more difficult opponent, China. At this time, China had no technical accumulation in the field of LNG ships. It can be said that South Korea had blocked China's gap for more than 20 years at the beginning, but China's speed of entering LNG ships was unexpected by South Korea. It took Japan 10 years to overcome the core technology of LNG ships, and the Koreans used it for eight years, but China only took it four years.
Before 1998, many domestic ship companies had never seen what LNG was. In 2005, two large domestic transport companies, LNG and CLNG, as well as Hudong Shipyard, began to attack LNG, and in 2008, they successfully created China's first domestic LNG ship "Dapenghao".
domestic market has opened, and the international market was opened in 2011 after Hudong Zhonghua won the world's largest private oil and gas manufacturer - ExxonMobil and Japan's largest shipping company - the merchant ship Mitsui LNG ship project. So far, Hudong Zhonghua has launched four generations of LNG ship models. At the end of 2021, Hudong Zhonghua and French GTT Company jointly developed the fifth generation LNG ship - Changheng series.
Here we also mention what kind of company GTT is. We must know that the core technology of LNG ships is the "liquid cargo maintenance system", which is to provide isolation barriers and thermal insulation for natural gas after liquefied and at minus 162 degrees. The patent of this technology is in the hands of Norway Kvaerner and French GTT. Even South Korea has to pay a patent fee of about 5% for each LNG ship built in. Of course, we are not the case. Therefore, Hudong Zhonghua can cooperate with old players of LNG ships to create the world's top LNG ship, which also shows that the LNG ship made by China is at the forefront of the world.
Qatar, a wealthy businessman in the Middle East, is preparing to build a northern oilfield project this year, and plans to order 100 LNG ships, including China's fifth-generation Changheng series LNG ships. If it is not technically proven that domestic LNG ships are large enough? The largest LNG ship with sea luck in 2022 is the Asali made in South Korea. It has a performance of 267,000 cubic meters of natural gas at one time and can be used by 40 million people in a month.
But this year, China has joined forces with Norwegian shipbuilding giant DNV GL classification society to start building LNG ships with the strongest transportation capacity in the world.
Technical level, China Hudong Zhonghua Shipyard is the leader in breaking South Korea's technological blockade. This group of engineers in Hudong Zhonghua were completely groundless at the beginning. They were able to gradually master the core technologies of Yinwa welding, special hull construction and turbine low-temperature equipment manufacturing in a short period of time. They did not take any shortcuts, but instead relied on dismantling the LNG hull made abroad to study it bit by bit.
The French GTT companies I mentioned above also have many old European and American countries that engage in LNG ships, such as Norway, , Sweden, , and were the first countries that engage in LNG ships. Many core patents were in their hands. Later, it was just to eliminate the manufacturing industry and labor costs to transfer LNG manufacturing to Japan and South Korea. In fact, there is no need for South Korea to always be proud and despise us. Many key technologies, South Korea is not obediently paying patent fees to others.
And China has been silently battling. For example, Yinwa Steel we only used four years to obtain core technology, breaking France's monopoly for more than 40 years. In the future, LNG ships will be used to find out who will make and conquer more patents. It is not the scale of your shipbuilding today. As the saying goes, feng shui turns and you don't know which one to go to tomorrow.
is written at the end. Now the competition between China and South Korea's LNG ships has begun. China-made LNG ships have been in line with the international market. They have torn a hole from South Korea's technological monopoly and broken several key technical barriers. As long as we are down-to-earth and carry out technological research and development step by step, I believe it is only a matter of time before we surpass South Korea.
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