Samsung Heavy Industries accelerates offshore order target on FLNG dominance

Samsung Heavy Industries is pushing hard to meet its full-year order target in the second half of 2026, leaning on its dominant offshore plant division. Having already secured its commercial vessel quota ahead of schedule, the company plans to sustain its growth momentum by winning additional orders for large floating liquefied natural gas production units, known as FLNGs, before year's end.

Samsung Heavy Industries said Tuesday its order target for this year stands at $13.9 billion — $6 billion more than last year's result of $7.9 billion. The target breaks down into $5.7 billion for commercial vessels and $8.2 billion for offshore facilities. New orders so far this year through July have reached $10 billion in total, while the order backlog as of end-June stood at $35.9 billion. The commercial vessel segment has secured $5.6 billion in orders, achieving 98% of its target. The company said it will maintain a profitability-focused order strategy backed by roughly three years' worth of stable production volume.

The offshore division has booked $4.4 billion in orders, reaching 54% of its target. The company secured two FLNG orders in the first half of this year and plans to pursue two additional large FLNGs in the second half. Samsung Heavy Industries has won 7 of the 11 large FLNGs ever ordered worldwide, demonstrating its competitive edge. Of those seven units, three have been delivered, three are in production and one is in the design phase.

The company is in discussions on multiple projects and expects further FLNG orders to follow. Specifically, Samsung Heavy Industries is pursuing a follow-on order for the second unit of the US Delfin FLNG project and an order for the Ksi Lisims project in Canada in the second half of this year.

Samsung Heavy Industries signed a contract last month with US LNG developer Delfin Midstream for the first Delfin FLNG unit at $2.88 billion. The deal also demonstrated the company's capabilities, as Samsung Heavy Industries will carry out the entire engineering, procurement and construction process on its own. Delfin has also announced plans to pursue a final investment decision on the second and third units this year, drawing attention to the possibility of follow-on orders for Samsung Heavy Industries. While the subsequent units would be separate contracts, they share identical specifications with the first unit, and the company's experience executing that order is expected to give it a strong competitive advantage.

For the Ksi Lisims project in Canada, Samsung Heavy Industries is in contract negotiations with energy company Western LNG. The project involves producing 12 million tons of LNG annually in northwestern British Columbia and exporting it to Asian markets. Samsung Heavy Industries has already completed the front-end engineering and design work — the preliminary design phase covering technical and cost assessments — giving it an edge in the competition. The pace of the project will hinge on the client's final investment decision and financing arrangements.

The company also said it will "actively participate in the preliminary design stages of FLNGs being developed in Argentina, Mexico and other regions to expand the order pipeline from next year onward," aiming to secure a steady one to two FLNG orders per year.

Meanwhile, Samsung Heavy Industries is actively pursuing new business opportunities through its offshore technology expertise. The company has been working with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to jointly develop a floating nuclear power facility. It is also moving to establish an early presence in the floating data center market, seen as a next-generation alternative to land-based data centers. Samsung Group signed a business cooperation agreement with OpenAI in October last year, and in April this year the company received basic design certification for a 50-MW floating data center. It has also signed memorandums of understanding with overseas companies for floating data center development and power system development. Last month, it concluded a business cooperation agreement on floating data centers with a Greek shipping company, a British classification society and a US AI server specialist.