The terminal will import more than 3 million tons of North West Shelf LNG a year to supply southern Chinese cities, including Hong Kong, via undersea pipelines.

The building of LNG carriers has long been dominated by a handful of countries, including South Korea and Japan, and the construction of this carrier was seen as a milestone in China, the newspaper said.

Sections of the LNG ship were moved into a dock late last month, where the pieces will be assembled.

Then the ship will leave dry dock in mid-December for inner fittings, Shanghai-based Hudong-Zhonghua Group, a subsidiary of the State-owned China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC), told the newspaper.

The carrier is designed to contain 147,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas. The volume of this gas will expand by 600 times under normal atmospheric temperature.

The double-hulled ship’s inner hull is lined with two layers of membranes made of Invar, a metal high in nickel content that does not contract under low temperatures. The liquefied gas is kept at minus 163°C.

Apart from the first LNG vessel, Hudong-Zhonghua now has three LNG vessel orders in hand with a possible fourth to come, Wang said. Construction on the second one, which is also being made for the Guangdong project, will soon be carried out.

The newspaper said China plans to build several more LNG terminals.