- K-sure announced its plan to increase LNG vessel support at the 11th Korea Ship Finance Forum held in Busan
- Focusing on the technical edges owned by Korean ship yards, K-sure is to reinforce their dominance in the LNG vessel market.


■ Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-sure, www.ksure.or.kr, Moon Jae-do, president) announced its bold plan to intensify its financing support for LNG vessel exports through its presentation delivered at the 11th Korea Ship Finance Forum held on Wednesday, November 1 in Busan, Korea’s second-largest and leading maritime city located on the Southeast coastline of Korea.

※ Marine Money Ship Finance Forum
○ With a 26-year of history, Marine Money Ship Finance Forum is a globally renowned ship finance forum hosted by Marine Money Magazine around 10 times a year at worldwide locations where ship owning and formation of capital for shipping are taking place. More than 5 thousand participants from 13 countries joined the event annually.

※ Korea Ship Finance Forum
○ Korea Ship Finance Forum is a regional conference for Marine Money Ship Finance Forum co-sponsored by Korea Trade insurance Corporation, Korea Development Bank and Korea Export Import Bank joined by more than 200 participants from Korean shipping, shipbuilding, law and ship financing areas to discuss the outlook for the Korean shipping and ship building markets and related global issues.

○ At this round, proposed by K-sure and joined by KOGAS and Samsung Heavy Industries, the LNG session was separately arranged to explore ways to enhancing the bid winning competitiveness of Korean ship yards with regards to LNG vessels such as LNG-FPSO(FLNG), LNG carriers, and FSRU.

* LNG-FPSO (Floating Production Storage Offloading): Also known as FLNG. LNG-FPSO is a floating offshore structure, which liquifies and stores natural gas produced from offshore gas fields and offload the gas onto LNG carriers for onshore delivery.

* LNG carrier: A tanker ship designed for transporting liquified natural gas.

* FSRU (Floating Storage Regasification Unit): A unit which regasifies liquified natural gas transported by LNG carriers and delivers the gas onshore. A structure concept of having a regasification plant set up on a floating storage unit.


■ At its presentation, K-sure underlined the importance of nurturing the LNG vessel building sector as another lucrative business for the Korean economy by taking the advantage of recently favorable LNG market conditions backed by strong LNG vessel orders and Korea’s technical edge in the LNG ship building for winning more orders from the market.

○ K-sure’s presentation received much attention from the audience for its report on increasing inquires from energy companies on financing methods for their investment in ship building/offshore structure construction, which were largely thanks to the improved business profitability of LNG projects stemmed from LNG production cost down and increasing LNG demand for downward LNG price trend. K-sure also shared its forecast on increase in FSRU orders based on the stricter environmental measures taken by the International Maritime Organization for SOx control, which is thus expected to lead to more demand on low cost, eco-friendly LNG vessels and offshore LNG terminals.

○ According to Clarksons, a U.K. based global shipping intelligence firm, which also gave a presentation as a co-speaker, during its research period until October 2017, including on-going cases, the Korean ship yards are taking the lion’s share of the LNG ship building orders, winning 386 orders (62%) and 29 orders (81%) respectively among 619 orders for LNG carriers and 36 orders for FSRU vessels in total.


■ Mr. Yanghyun Lim, Executive Director of K-sure who delivered the presentation at the forum, said “Korean ship yards, which suffered a long slump without many orders from the market, will get strong support from K-sure to bolster their leading position in this growing market of high added values,

* As of September 2017, among the remaining amount of K-sure ship finance fund of U$16.1billion, amount for LNG vessel takes up 15.3% with U$2.4 billion.

○ Going forward, not only for the LNG vessel contracts, also for cases involving different types of projects such as LNG carrier building, onshore LNG terminal construction and submarine pipeline installation all at the same time, K-sure will further intensify its support by augmenting its staff specialized in LNG projects and diversifying financial schemes.“


* Mr. Yanghyun Lim, Executive Director of K-sure Investment and Finance Division, speaks about K-sure’s policy direction on LNG vessel support at the 11th Korea Ship Finance Forum held on Wednesday, November 1 in Busan.