Two six-year-old, 174,000 cu m Korean LNG carriers have anchored in the layup waters of Labuan in Malaysia having remarkably never entered the gas trades thanks to faulty containment systems. South Korean media suggest the SK Shipping vessels – the SK Serenity and SK Spica – are now likely to be sold for scrap.
Last December a court in London ruled that South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) should pay the shipowner $290m to SK Shipping as a result of defects in the cargo holds of two gas carriers. The ships had been ordered nine years ago, and made headlines at the time, as they were the first to feature a new Korean-developed KC-1 membrane system. Despite several repairs, the containment systems were found to be faulty and the ships never traded.
Koreans have been trying to develop their own gas containment systems for years to avoid paying sizeable fees to France’s GTT, the world’s dominant provider of membrane gas containment systems for ships trading today.
