Jointly owned LNG vessels named

On September 10, NYK, Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC), and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. held a naming ceremony for two jointly owned LNG vessels being built at the Nagasaki shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Yen-Shiang Shih, the chairman of CPC, attended the ceremony, and his wife Ei-Wang Chang named the vessels Taitar No. 1 and Taitar No. 3 before cutting the ceremonial rope holding the vessels in place. Hideaki Omiya, President of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Takao Omae, Representative Director Senior Executive Managing Officer of Mitsui & Co. Ltd., and Yasushi Yamawaki, Executive Vice-Chairman of NYK, were also in attendance.

Taitar No. 1 and Taitar No. 3 are jointly owned by CPC (45%), NYK (27.5%), and Mitsui (27.5%), and are two of four sister ships. Taitar No. 1 will be completed on September 30, 2009, and Taitar No. 3 is scheduled to be completed on January 5, 2010.

The other two vessels are being built at the Sakaide shipyard of Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation. The four sister ships will be deployed for shipment of about three million tons of LNG from Qatar to Taiwan under long-term contracts of 23 to 24 years each.

Demand for clean-energy LNG has been increasing in response to environmental concerns, and NYK continues to provide services that meet the expanding demand for stable, economical transportation of LNG.