CMES Orders Six VLCCs at Dalian Shipbuilding
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
Monday, December 21, 2015
China Merchants Energy Shipping Co Ltd (CMES) has firmed up orders to build six very large crude carriers (VLCCs) at Dalian Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Corp for $522 million, reports Reuters.
The deliveries of 308,000dwt VLCCs are scheduled between August 2018 and October 2019. Order for six more VLCCs brings Chinese tanker operator’s total orders to ten.
A week ago, CMES has placed an order for four newbuilding VLCCs, with two each at Nantong Cosco KHI Ship Engineering (Nacks) and Dalian Cosco KHI Ship Engineering (Dacks).
The four orders are part of a 10-VLCC newbuild plan which was announced early last week. The eco-friendly VLCCs will be operated by China VLCC, a joint venture of CMES and Sinotrans & CSC Group.
In total, the board of CMES approved a plan to construct 10 VLCC in December.
CMES has integrated its VLCC assets with Sinotrans & CSC through their joint venture China VLCC, which has 34 VLCCs in its fleet and another nine on order.