Taiwan orders oil tanker

Taiwan orders oil tanker

TAIPEI (DPA): Taiwan's China Petroleum Corp (CPC) and a Singapore company ordered an oil tanker from Japan's Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Corp Saturday to ship Indonesian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Taiwan.

The ship, carrying 135,000-square-metres of LNG, will be delivered in December 1999, CPC said.

The sate-run CPC and Singapore's Osprey each covers 40 percent of the cost. Cotaas Larsen, a subsidiary of Osprey, will put up 20 percent.

CPC began importing LNG from Indonesia's state oil firm Pertamina in 1990, 1.5 million tons each year.

In 1995, CPC signed the second contract to increase its annual LNG import to 3.34 million tons a year. The increase will begin in 1998 and reach 3.34 million tons a year by the year 2000. CPC also imports LNG from Malaysia. The quota for 1997 is 3.32 million tons.