On August 13, Golar LNG (NASDAQ:GLNG) used its second-quarter earnings call to announce a fourth floating LNG unit, an order signed just hours before the call began.
The Mark II vessel will be built at CIMC Raffles Shipyard in China and delivered within 2029, making it the earliest available liquefaction capacity anywhere in the world
Combined with an EBITDA backlog of $17 billion already locked in through Hilli, Gimi, and the FLNG Esperanza, the announcement reframes Golar as a company still adding capacity rather than one just running out its existing fleet. Bull Case: A Growth Machine With Scarce Capacity The new order lifts Golar’s controlled liquefaction capacity by 41%, from 8.6 million tonnes to more than 12 million tonnes once fully delivered. Management said that if the unit is chartered on terms similar to last year’s Esperanza deal, annual earnings capacity could rise 50%, pushing run-rate EBITDA past $1.2 billion by 2030.
That confidence rests on a shipyard bottleneck. Samsung, the industry’s biggest builder, isn’t expected to have open capacity until 2031, and Wison in China is on track to book its next two large units, leaving it committed well into the next decade. Seatrium and CIMC, the only two yards actively converting FLNG units right now, have built exclusively for Golar.