10 billion big order was "cut off hu"? The shipbuilding showdown between China and South Korea has added another uncertainty

South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries will cover all nine shuttle tankers for Transpetro, Brazil's largest oil and gas transportation company. Under the "assist" of price advantage and American pressure on Chinese shipbuilding, this nearly 10 billion big order that was originally shared by Chinese and South Korean shipping companies was finally intercepted by South Korean shipping companies.

According to trade sources, Transpetro, a (Petrobras) shipping company plans to build orders for all nine 158,000 DWT DP2 Suez shuttle tankers to Samsung Heavy Industries. Transpetro Has selected the Greek shipping company Tsakos Group as the ship owner, and will sign a 15-year long-term charter contract with Tsakos.

The new ships each cost about $146.5 million each and the total transaction value is about $1.318.5 billion (about 9.562 billion yuan). The first two are scheduled to be delivered in 2027, and the next seven will be delivered in 2028.

Transpetro Earlier this year it was announced that nine shuttle tankers would be invited, but reports at the time said that the deal would be shared by three shipping companies in China and South Korea, including CoSCO Zhoushan Shipping Heavy Industries will build five, while Samsung Heavy Industries and Hanwha Ocean will each build two vessels, each cost more than $150 million.

Industry insiders say Samsung is the most advantageous in price and is good at building shuttle tankers, allowing it to "win" orders.

It is understood that the shuttle tanker is specially used for offshore oil fields to the land delivery of an oil tanker. Due to the high technical requirements of offshore oil transfer, most of the ships are equipped with a series of complex oil loading and unloading systems, and most of the ships are equipped with power positioning system and helicopter landing platform, and the cost is much higher than that of the same tonnage tanker, which is a typical high value-added ship.

Samsung Heavy Industries has rich experience and performance in the design and construction of shuttle oil tankers. In 1995, Samsung Heavy Industries first entered the shuttle oil tanker market, becoming the first shipyard in South Korea to build a shuttle oil tanker. So far, Samsung Heavy Industries has taken more than 40 percent of the market share in the world, ranking first in the world. In 2005, Samsung Heavy Industries also undertook the world's first batch of three two-way propulsion ice-breaking shuttle tankers from Russian state-owned shipping company SCF Sovcomflot, and all successfully delivered in 2009, which was highly praised by the industry. Of the 12 Arctic shuttle tankers available worldwide, 10 are built by Samsung Heavy Industries.

Samsung Heavy Industries is also Tsakos's shipyard of choice in recent years, with three of the tankers under construction built by Samsung Heavy Industries, including two in November 2022, and one in March last year to ExxonMobil.

It's worth noting that Samsung Heavy Industries the Tsakos shuttle tanker for $149 million last March, while the latest order fell to $146.5 million.

In addition to its price advantage, the South Korean shipbuilding industry believes that the US pressure on China's shipbuilding industry is also why Samsung Heavy Industries won the big deal