Prospective US shale gas production and export could require 272 new LNG carriers, Barclays Capital says.
Currently, LNG carrier newbuilding orderbook is just around 59 vessels.
Barclays analysts said, "If all 136mtpa come on stream, that would require 272 LNG vessels."
"We have done the leg work on carrying capacity, travel times, turnaround times and likely destinations, and concluded that for every 1mtpa of US LNG export, we expect there to be demand for 1.5-2.0 modern full-size LNG vessels.”
"Modern LNG vessels cost around $200m, so the total LNG vessel investment could be as high as $54bn for the US LNG exports alone."
However, "We do not know how many of these projects will ultimately come online and forecasting that is outside of our mandate here," it added.