The assembly of the hulls of two new LNG transport units for the ORLEN Group has begun. The ships will be named “Józef Piłsudski” and “Ignacy Jan Paderewski” and will enter service in 2025. This will increase the corporation’s fleet to six units, strengthening the Group’s logistical capabilities in the transport of liquefied natural gas.
– LNG is one of the pillars of the national energy security system. Last year, ORLEN received 62 cargoes of liquefied natural gas in Świnoujście with a total volume of about 4.66 million tons of LNG. This means that we used the full capacity of the President Lech Kaczyński terminal, which is about 6.2 billion cubic meters of gas in a gaseous state. Our own fleet of gas carriers strengthens our position on a very competitive global LNG market, guaranteeing us independence in terms of transporting this raw material – says Daniel Obajtek, President of the ORLEN Board.
The emerging units are the fifth and sixth of eight gas carriers, which will eventually join the ORLEN Group’s LNG transport fleet. The construction of both units at the Korean shipyard Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries has just entered another important stage.
In the case of the gas carrier, which will be named after Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the keel was laid, marking the end of preliminary work on the unit and the beginning of the hull assembly. In the case of the second – the first cutting of plates from which the ship will be made took place. This is a symbolic beginning of construction. The unit will also bear the name of a prominent figure in Polish history – Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
Like other ships built for ORLEN, the gas carriers will have a capacity equal to about 70,000 tons of LNG, and their size has been chosen so that the units can enter almost all terminals in the world. The construction and technologies used in the construction of ships limit the impact of their work on the natural environment. These solutions include, among others, integrated energy intake management and a reliquefaction system, which allows the recovery of evaporating natural gas without loss to the cargo and while maintaining the energy efficiency of the units.
The construction of the ships is planned to be completed in the first half of 2025. They will then join the already sailing international waters: “Lech Kaczyński”, “Grażyna Gęsicka”, “Święta Barbara” and “Ignacy Łukasiewicz”, and like them will be used based on a long-term charter contract concluded with a specialized shipping company – Knutsen OAS Shipping. The gas carriers will be used to execute contracts in the free-on-board (FOB) formula, according to which the buyer, i.e. the ORLEN Group, is responsible for the receipt and transport of the cargo.
