China's COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation and shipbuilder COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry have entered into an agreement for the construction of six new tankers.
The six vessels include two 114,200DWT Aframax crude oil tankers, two 109,900DWT LR2 oil/product tankers, and two 74,000DWT Panamax oil/product tankers. The Aframaxes and the LR2 vessels will be fitted with dual-fuel engines that can also run on methanol while the Panamaxes will have methanol-ready propulsion.
Green methanol was considered as a fuel option for its significantly reduced CO2 emissions.
All six tankers will have optimised designs and intelligent ship systems for route optimisation, reduction of fuel consumption and minimising maintenance costs by automatically collecting, analysing and applying ship operation data.
The contract for all six tankers has total value of approximately CNY3.496 billion (US$480 million).
COSCO Shipping Heavy Industries will build the Aframax tankers and the LR2 tankers at its Yangzhou shipyard while the Panamax tankers will be constructed at its Dalian facilities.