Global LNG shipping – orders and deliveries

A rush of new orders at the end of the year helped push the order total for 2019 to 50 large ships. Spot charter rates moved up from US$65,000/day in mid September to a peak of US$140,000/day at the end of October, as slow-steaming and floating storage tied up an increasing number of ships hoping to benefit from higher winter prices – or simply couldn’t get into full regas terminals. But with storage plays beginning to unwind rates have since fallen back and dipped back below US$100,000/day by early December and were around US$90,000/day in early January. Deliveries have fallen behind orders with the late December rush with a total of 41 new large LNG ships added to the fleet in 2019. One vessel was scrapped in 2019 with the net result that fleet capacity grew 8.4% in 2019. The accompanying Excel download to this reports lists all the new orders placed since 2016, together with all new ships delivered in 2018 and 2019 and scheduled for delivery in 2020.