Teekay’s first Arctic LNG carrier, the 172,000-cbm Eduard Toll, has been launched at the South Korean Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard.
It is the first of Teekay’s six ARC7 LNG carrier newbuilds to be constructed for the Yamal LNG project. The vessel’s construction began in April last year.
The vessel has been designed and built to perform year-round navigation through the Arctic and has the icebreaking ability allowing it to proceed through ice up to 2.1 m thick.
A fleet of 15 similar vessels will be serving the Yamal LNG production terminal and will call on a regular basis at the Zeebrugge LNG terminal to perform transshipment operations to conventional LNG carriers for further redelivery to other destinations.
The $27 billion Yamal LNG project with the production capacity of 16.5 mtpa is on track to ship its first cargo of LNG by the end of this year.
Shareholders in the Yamal LNG project are Novatek, as the operator with a 50.1 percent stake, CNPC and Total with a 20 percent stake each and China’s Silk Road Fund with a 9.9 percent stake.
LNG World News Staff