The cost of hiring liquefied natural gas carriers on year-long charters exceeded $100,000 a day for the first time since 2006 as a shortage of vessels drove up the cost of transporting the fuel, shipbroker Fearnleys AS said.
Rents rose to $102,000 a day in the week ended Wednesday from $99,000 in the prior seven days, Fearnleys, a unit of Oslo- based shipping-services and investment-banking group Astrup Fearnley, said in an e-mailed report. Rates are set to reach $140,000 a day in 2013 as the shortage worsens, Pareto Securities AS said this week.
The world’s 364 LNG carriers are the most expensive vessels to hire for a year among the fleet of tankers, container ships and dry-bulk commodity carriers. LNG prices that are lower in Europe than Asia created opportunities to hire carriers for single voyages to the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic to resell cargoes at a profit, said Rikard Vabo, an analyst at Astrup Fearnley securities unit Fearnley Fonds ASA.
“There’s limited ship availability,” Vabo said by phone, confirming that rents last topped $100,000 in early 2006.
Daily hire costs for modern LNG vessels will rise to $120,000 next year, Oslo-based Pareto said in a report Sept. 6. They were as low as $30,000 a year ago, it said. Demand for the ships has outpaced fleet growth for the first time in a decade since the middle of 2010, lifting rates, according to Pareto.
Dedicated Projects
As much as 90 percent of the LNG fleet is employed for terms of up to 20 years on dedicated projects, curbing the number of vessels that can carry spot, or single-voyage, cargoes. Twelve-month hire costs for ships able to haul 138,000 cubic meters (4.87 million cubic feet) to 145,000 cubic meters of LNG surged 47 percent this year, Fearnleys said.
Increased shipments of the fuel to top global importer Japan from Qatar, the largest exporter, helped to increase hire costs, Vabo said. Japanese LNG imports from Qatar rose to a record last quarter as the Asian country sought alternative energy sources after March’s earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear-power plants to shut, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Use of LNG carriers available for spot cargoes jumped to 100 percent of capacity from 50 percent in the last 12 months and will remain unchanged for the next two years, according to Pareto. It predicted annual growth in LNG demand of 5 percent to 6.5 percent until 2025, the strongest among all conventional energy sources over the next 20 years.
World LNG trade totals 220.2 million metric tons, according to a report on the website of the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers.
About 30 percent of natural gas consumed in 2009 was traded internationally, with 28 percent shipped by sea from 17 countries, according to Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world’s largest shipbroker.
One-year charter rates for container ships, supertankers, oil-product carriers, and panamax and capesize dry-bulk commodity ships are no higher than $22,125 daily, according to data from Clarkson.
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