With the global shipyard business experiencing a multiyear drought, ship owners and builders alike are putting their hopes on an anticipated surge in future substantial natural-gas shipment expansion.
With shipbuilders cutting more than 20,000 jobs in the last year alone, future natural gas plus West Texas Intermediate oil shipments are indicating a turnaround in 2018 and thereafter. Contracts for vessels to transport liquified natural gas are picking up amid an absence of shale gas in the U.S. Also, increasingly stringent global curbs on pollution are pushing utilities and transportation operators even harder toward clean-burning fuel, wherever it is located.