Laid down 1 June 2007 Acquired 16 January 2008 Launched 29 August 2007 Draft 12 m | Christened 6 November 2007 Construction started 1 June 2007 Weight 73,560 tons | |
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Name Flanders Loyalty (2007-2011)
BW Liberty (2011-present) Owner Exmar Shipmanagement, Belgium (2007-2011)
BW Gas, Norway (2011-present) Port of registry Antwerp (2007-2011)
Oslo (2011-present) Builder Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering | ||
The Flanders Loyalty is a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker, currently owned by BW Gas of Oslo, Norway and named BW Liberty.
Ship history
The ship was built by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co, Ltd, Korea for Exmar Shipmanagement of Antwerp, Belgium. She was one of two identically constructed ships, and she and her sister ship, the Flanders Liberty, were both built to transport liquefied gasses like propane, butane, and ammonia. The keel of the Flanders Loyalty was laid on 1 June 2007, she was launched on 29 August 2007 and finally delivered to her owners on 16 January 2008. The naming ceremony took place on 6 November 2007. The Flanders Loyalty and the Flanders Liberty, were named together in the Daewoo shipyard.
Sea trials were held in December 2007 and on 16 January 2008 she took her maiden voyage from Okpo, South Korea to the Port of Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia, where amounts of different gases were taken onboard by ship-to-ship transfer, in order to execute all the gas trials necessary before the ship could finally be operated.
After completion of the tests she went to Singapore anchorage for some bunkering (taking on fuel and supplies). Her first port of loading was Ruwais in the United Arab Emirates. There she loaded butane, which she discharged one day later in Jebel Ali, also in the United Arab Emirates. In her first 10 months of service she called at 30 ports, all of them located between Japan and the Persian Gulf.
Flanders Loyalty was one of a number of ships involved in an exchange of vessels between Exmar and BW Gas in August–September 2011, and was renamed BW Liberty.