The tanker was christened Pacific Breeze at Kawasaki Heavy Industries' Sakaide Works in Japan where construction recently wrapped up.

 

The tanker will transport the 1.75 million tonnes a year of LNG allocated to CPC under a sales and purchase agreement signed in 2012, which also included deals with Japanese utilities Chubu Electric Power Company (490,000tpa) and Toho Gas (280,000tpa).

 

The Pacific Breeze was named as it was built based on a construction agreement between Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha subsidiary Pacific Breeze LNG Transport - a holding company located in Panama City, Panama - and KHI. 

 

The tanker, to be deployed in conjunction with the production start-up of Ichthys which is expected by the end of next March, is about 300m long with a beam of about 52m.

 

The tanker's 182,000cu.m tank capacity is also one of the world's largest among MOSS-type LNG tankers.

 

Through Inpex Shipping, the Japanese company jointly established Oceanic Breeze LNG Transport in April 2013 with K-Line at an ownership ratio of 70% (K-Line) to 30%, and has commissioned Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to construct an LNG tanker through Oceanic Breeze. 

 

Inpex and K-Line will jointly own the LNG tanker, which will transport Inpex's own LNG offtake from the Ichthys project - 900,000tpa - to Inpex's Naoetsu LNG terminal at Joetsu, Japan. 

 

The tanker is undergoing the final stages of construction work at MHI's Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works in Japan.