LNG

摘要

The LNG shipping market has been relatively quiet over the past month. The seasonal erosion of the cross-basin arbitrage has resulted in fewer fixtures both East and West. The Far East especially has been hit hardest with the restart of Australian projects. This has led to shorter West-East fixing, shorter tonne miles and therefore lengthening availability. At the same time, the majority of portfolio players are long on their own shipping and have the ability to provide cheap tonnage, thus dragging the charter rates down. On a more positive note, the commissioning of the third liquefaction train at the Sabine pass terminal and the startup of the third train at the Gorgon Project in Australia could possibly absorb some of the unutilised tonnage. The addition of new product in the market is expected to gradually change the current status quo in which there seems to be an oversupply of vessels against product. In the short term, other factors such as low demand and the historically low oil price, are hindering the short-term progress. In the long run LNG production is expected to outpace growth in LNG carrier deliveries. For 2017 we expect slowly improving rates.