South Korea’s largest shipbuilder, Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., announced it has tentatively received a US$500 million order to construct At-Shore LNG (ASLNG), a natural gas liquefaction facility in Canada.
Under the agreement, Hyundai Heavy will realize a front-end engineering design (FEED) for the hull of the ASLNG and build the LNG liquefaction facility for Steelhead LNG Corp.
Scheduled to start operations in 2024 in Vancouver, the ASLNG facility is expected to transform natural gas sent through underground pipelines into 6 million tons of LNG per year. Gas carriers will then ship the LNG to buyer countries, according to a company spokesman, as quoted by Yonhap news agency.
Canadian company Steelhead LNG plans to use the facility for its Kwispaa LNG project, in cooperation with the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, at Sarita Bay on Vancouver Island. The proposed project could use a combination of existing and new pipelines and right-of-ways to transport the gas from northeastern BC and northwestern Alberta to the Kwispaa LNG facility, supporting significant employment and other economic opportunities in those regions. Kwispaa LNG is the only Canadian LNG project being developed through a co-management relationship between industry and First Nations.
As oil prices have recently rebounded to $60 per barrel after bottoming out at $26 in 2016, Hyundai Heavy aims to achieve $1.6 billion in offshore facility orders this year. This comes along with the company’s new target orders of US$13.2 billion worth within 2018, up 76% from last year’s US$7.5 billion, as announced in early January.
The company bagged US$21.2 billion in 2013, US$10.7 billion in 2014 and US$12.4 billion in 2015, Yonhap reported.