Korea's Shipbuilding Industry See Signs of Recovery

After struggling from declining orders during the global recession some signs of recovery are being seen in Korea's shipbuilding industry. Samsung Heavy Industries announced on Tuesday that it won deals worth 750 million US dollars with four European shipmaking firms to build nine oil tankers and it will build a marine facility in Southeast Asia.
It also reached an agreement with multinational petroleum company Royal Dutch Shell to make a liquefied natural gas floating production storage offloading unit or a LNG-FPSO unit capable of producing liquified natural gas at sea as well as storing or transporting it to LNG carriers after liquefaction.
Although the price of the unit has not been publicly released industry insiders estimate Samsung will reap an additional two billion dollars through the deal which is one of the company's first in nearly three months.
A consortium led by Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, meanwhile, has been chosen as the preferred bidder for Saudi Arabia's project to build power plants worth two billion dollars.
The gas power plant with a capacity of 1,730 megawatts will be located some 125 kilometers west of the Middle Eastern nation's capital Riyadh.
Inside sources say Hyundai also could soon receive orders to build vessels for a Greek shipping company.
This would be the conglomerate's first deal since September 2008 due to a drop in global shipbuilding orders and prices.
And last month Angola's state-run oil company Sonangol awarded a deal worth around 340 million dollars to Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering.
In the deal the Korean shipmaker will deliver five crude oil carriers to the African country between 2011 and 2013.
Samsung Heavy Industries says although conditions are stagnant in the global shipbuilding industry nations and companies across the globe are making efforts to secure ships to get ready for post-crisis economic situations.
But some say that unless the problem of excess supply is resolved difficulties are expected to lay ahead for the time being.