LNG carrier owner and operator GasLog received its latest newbuilding from South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) on July 31.
GasLog Warsaw is the first 180,000 cbm carrier delivered to the company by SHI. The shipbuilder has a further seven units for GasLog on order, according to VesselsValue data.
The 297-meter Mark III Flex Plus carrier has a 0.07% boil off rate and reliquefaction and low pressure dual fuel two-stroke (“X-DF”) propulsion.
In its financial report for the second quarter of 2019, the company said the vessel was immediately delivered into a new charter with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cheniere Energy.
The charter with Cheniere will run until GasLog Warsaw’s long-term charter with an Endesa subsidiary starts in May 2021 .
In addition to receiving a new carrier, this year’s second trimester saw the company exit the Cool Pool , a spot-fixture LNG carrier pooling agreement between GasLog and Golar LNG, and subsequently sign two time charter agreements with a subsidiary of Gunvor Group for the GasLog Shanghai and the GasLog Salem. The deals were agreed for three and a half years and up to nine months, respectively.
For the quarter ended June 30, GasLog reported a loss of USD 10.5 million, compared to a profit of USD 14.2 million for the same period a year before.
The change was mainly attributed to the unfavorable movement in mark-to-market valuations of its derivative financial instruments in the second quarter of 2019 and the increase in finance costs, partially offset by the increased profit from operations.
The company reported USD 154.3 million in revenues for the second quarter of this year, while revenues for the same period in 2018 were USD 132.8 million.
“GasLog’s revenues from our year-on-year fleet expansion and our time charter earnings supported our financial performance against a backdrop of relatively weak LNG shipping rates in the second quarter, further validating our strategy of maximizing our fleet’s multi-year charter coverage,” Paul Wogan, Chief Executive Officer, commented.
“We are seeing increasing customer interest in multi-month and multi-year charters, underpinning the long-term growth prospects for LNG and supporting our view that the second quarter weakness in LNG shipping markets is temporary.”