Teekay Offshore has conditionally ordered two new shuttle tankers from South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries.
The company, providing oil and gas shipping and production units to the oil and gas industry, has recently formed a separate shuttle tanker subsidiary, called Teekay Shuttle Tankers, into which it will transfer all of its shuttle tanker business.
A shuttle tanker is a vessel used for offloading of oil from offshore installations, as an alternative to constructing oil pipelines.
Coinciding with the formation of the shuttle tanker company, Teekay Offshore on Wednesday said it had entered into conditional shipbuilding contracts with Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. to construct two Suezmax DP2 shuttle tanker newbuildings with options to order up to two additional vessels.
These newbuilding vessels will be constructed based on Teekay’s new Shuttle Spirit design.
According to Teekay, the design incorporates proven technologies to increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, including LNG propulsion technology.
Upon delivery scheduled in 2019 and 2020, these vessels will provide shuttle tanker services in the North Sea under the Partnership’s existing Master Agreement with Statoil and will free up required vessel capacity to service Teekay Offshore’s contract of affreightment (CoA) fleet in the North Sea.