Knutsen NYK Offshore Tankers AS Enters into New Time-charter

December 9, 2011

Knutsen NYK Offshore Tankers AS (headquarters: Haugesund, Norway), of which NYK has a 50 percent share, has entered into a time-charter contract with Standard Marine Tønsberg AS (SMT, headquarters: Tønsberg, Norway), owned by ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, for 10 years plus an option for a new built dynamic positioning 112,000 DWT offshore shuttle tanker* to service SMT for their North Sea offshore fields. The vessel will be delivered to SMT in the first quarter of 2014.

The vessel will be built at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan and equipped with bow-loading equipment.** The tanker will also be a dynamic-positioning system class 2*** vessel in order to satisfy the stringent North Sea shuttle tanker requirements.

The NYK Group will continue its efforts to provide stable and economical energy-transport services.

* Shuttle tanker
Also called a “floating pipeline,” a shuttle tanker loads crude oil from floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) units in deepwater fields while maintaining a certain distance in the ocean, and then transports the oil to crude-oil storage units or petroleum storage stations on land.

** Bow-loading system
A system to carry out cargo operations along the bow of a shuttle tanker without contact between the tanker and the offloading unit (mainly FPSO units) in harsh sea conditions. Such a system also allows cargo hoses to be connected or disconnected from offloading units easier than usual so that the shuttle tanker may evacuate quickly in case of an emergency.

*** Dynamic-positioning system class 2
A more redundant dynamic-positioning system that duplicates all equipment and wiring so that no single fault in an active system will cause the system to fail.

NYK Line, press release