Bermuda-headquartered liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipping company Flex LNG has secured a multi-year assignment with an undisclosed company for one of its LNG carriers.
Following redelivery from a three-year time charter deal at the end of the first quarter of 2024, Flex LNG won a 312-day time charter agreement with a one-year extension option for the Flex Constellation vessel with an unnamed company said to be a large Asian LNG importer.
Since the existing charterer of Flex Constellation did not exercise its one-year extension option, the vessel will be open for trading spot and/or short-term work from the end of the first quarter of 2025 for around 12 months before commencing its new 15-year job.
The start of the new charter will occur during the first or second quarter of 2026 with maturity in 2041. This deal comes with an extension option for the charterer until 2043. Flex LNG did not disclose the name of the new charterer, but it explained that the parent company of the current charterer booked the vessel.
Øystein Kalleklev , CEO of Flex LNG Management, commented: “With this time charter, we further increase our backlog and earnings visibility with a charter rate for the new period in line with the existing charter rate for the vessel. Following this agreement, Flex LNG has in total 64 years of firm backlog which may increase to 98 years in the event charterers utilize all their extension options.”
“Consequently, Flex LNG is very well positioned to navigate near term market weakness with 11.2 out of our 13 ships on firm time charter for the next year at an average time charter rate of close to $80,000 per day.”
The deal for the 2019-built Flex Constellation, which is an advanced 173,400 cbm LNG carrier with ME-GI two-stroke propulsion and partial reliquefaction system (PRS), comes only weeks after Flex LNG disclosed contract extensions for two other vessels in its fleet: Flex Courageous and Flex Resolute .
“Additionally, we also have one ship on variable hire until minimum Q3-2025, but where the charterer has the option to extend this variable hire to 2030. Hence, close to 90 per cent of our income days for 2025 is already covered with backlog stretching all the way into 2041,” Kalleklev added.