Chinese yard Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (DSIC) has emerged as the front runner for a contract from Japan's Modec to convert a very large crude carrier into a floating production, storage and offloading vessel for the flagship Mero (formerly Libra) field operated by Petrobras in Brazil's pre-salt province, writes Xu Yihe.
Industry officials said they felt DSIC was well placed to eventually land the job over rival Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry, partly because DSIC unit Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Marine Services has already won a Modec contract for pre-conversion work on the VLCC Luxe, which is internally billed as Modec Vessel 31 (MV 31).
