OREANDA-NEWS. On April 08, 2008 a naming ceremony was held for the LNG carrier, Grand Mereya at the shipbuilding yard of Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. in Chiba, Japan (on the coast of Tokyo Bay). The new vessel, which will transport liquefied natural gas, was named after the Sakhalin Mereya River running near Prigorodnoye, where Russia’s first LNG plant is being constructed, reported the press-centre of Sakhalin Energy.

The LNG carrier was built for a Russian-Japanese consortium made up of Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd. (MOL), Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd. (K-Line) and Primorsk Shipping Corporation (PRISCO) and has been awarded a long-term charter by Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the world’s largest oil-and-gas project - Sakhalin II. The consortium won Sakhalin Energy’s tender, to transport liquefied natural gas, in November 2004.

The new high-technology vessel / LNG carrier with an ice strengthened hull is specially designed to operate in ice and low temperature conditions. The tank capacity of Grand Mereya is more than 145,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas. The design of the vessel will allow year-round exporting of gas from the LNG plant, located at Prigorodnoye in the south of Sakhalin Island, to countries in the Asia-Pacific Region.

“Grand Mereya is the third new LNG carrier commissioned for our project,”- said Ian Craig, Sakhalin Energy’s Chief Executive Officer. “It will be operated by a new Russian-Japanese consortium, on a similar basis to our other two carriers. This will greatly contribute to Russia’s growing expertise in the handling and transportation of LNG - a crucial energy resource in supplying the key Asia Pacific markets.”

The LNG carrier will be crewed by highly qualified Russian and Japanese specialists.

“We understand the complexity of transporting liquefied natural gas and addressed it with grave responsibility,” said Alexander Kirilichev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Primorsk Shipping Corporation. “ We have been preparing seamen to perform this task for several years. Our specialists were trained on MOL vessels, absorbing all the ins and outs of work on LNG carriers. But we were not only learning! We shared our wide experience of work in ice-bound conditions with MOL officers. MOL specialists underwent courses in ice navigation on our training simulators.”

Successful operation of the specialised vessel will allow partner companies to further develop mutually beneficial cooperation.