Geoje: Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering last week delivered the last of a series of three 319,000dwt VLCCs to Middle East owner NITC. The handover also completed a wider series of 17 'new generation' tankers - 13 VLCCs and four scaled-down suezmaxes - ordered simultaneously by NITC from four separate Korean yard in June 2005.
Unusually all vessels were built as far as possible to the same design, despite the different yards involved - Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries and DSME. The common design was at NITC's insistence for reasons of commonality.
This double-hull tankers feature special design characteristics and enhanced safety and environmental features costing around 9% more than standard yard prices. In particular, the DSME- and SHI-built vessels, classed by DNV, achieve extremely low levels of noise and vibration and were the first tankers ever to receive DNV's highest 'comfort' notation, COMF-V(1), normally reserved for passenger vessels, as well as carrying its low vibration notation VIBR.
DNV classed 10 of NITC's latest series of 17 vessels (the remainder going to Lloyd's Register). The two companies have enjoyed a long history of working together, most notably on the first series of VLCCs ever built in China at Dalian Shipyard in the late 1990s/early 2000s. [27/08/09]
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