New extension deal paves the way for Flex LNG’s carrier duo to stay with ‘supermajor’ until 2039

Bermuda-headquartered liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipping company Flex LNG has secured an extension of the time charter (TC) agreements for two tankers from its fleet.

The new period for Flex Courageous and Flex Resolute with what the firm says is a supermajor is set to last from 2029 to 2032 under a three-year firm period, which may be extended by an additional seven years in the 2+2+3 format, allowing it to run until 2039. If the charterer uses all its new extension options, the ships are scheduled for redelivery that same year.

Although the new firm periods and associated options are not conditional upon the last existing extension option from 2027 to 2029 for the two ships, Flex LNG is convinced that the extension option will be used given the new firm period.

Øystein Kalleklev, CEO of Flex LNG Management, said: “We are happy to announce another substantial charter extension for Flex Courageous and Flex Resolute. Customer satisfaction is paramount to Flex LNG and we therefore focus on delivering not only advanced vessels, but also a superior service level in everything we do from shore to sea.”

“Hence, we are very pleased that our existing Charterer have agreed to continue to work together with us for a very long period to come. This extension fits with our communicated strategy of fixing our ships for longer duration at higher rates.”

As disclosed in 2021, the Bermuda-based firm and an undisclosed “energy major” agreed on TCs for the two ships starting in Q1 2022. The firm period was three years for each of the LNG carriers, which the charterer could extend by two additional two-year periods.

This was followed by January and February 2024 extensions when the data from VesselsValue indicated that BP was the charterer. The firm period for the ships was extended from Q1 2025 until Q1 2027, bringing the charterer to two remaining options to extend each ship’s contract by another two years until Q1 2029. These two options are declarable in the first quarter of 2026. 

More recently, Cheniere extended the charter of Flex Endeavour in April, followed by the shipowner scoring an extension for Flex Constellation with “a large Asian LNG importer” a month later.