SEOUL—Samsung Heavy Industries Co., the world’s second-largest shipyard, received a 633.4-billion won  order from Europe to build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform.

The storage and offloading unit will be delivered to Flex LNG Ltd. by September 2011, Seoul-based Samsung Heavy said in a statement. The platform will be able to handle 1.7 million tons of LNG annually, the e-mailed statement said.

Shipyards are seeking more orders for offshore structures as slowing economic growth worldwide and falling commodity prices damp orders for new vessels and rising energy demand spurs gas producers to explore newer areas for the cleaner-burning fuel.

Flex said in June it would build the floating LNG unit together with Mitsubishi Corp. and Peak Petroleum Industries Nigeria Ltd. to source LNG from waters off the coast of Nigeria. The venture may start supplying 1.5 million tons of LNG a year for 15 years from the second half of 2011, UK-based Flex said.

LNG FPSO, as the unit is known, will help gas developers save expenses as they won’t need to construct an onshore facility, Samsung Heavy said. The mobility of the platform will allow it to be used for multiple projects, it said.

Floating facilities may cost a third of the expense of an onshore facility and take less than half the time to construct, a Citigroup Inc. report said in April.

Samsung is in the process of developing a larger LNG platform next year and will seek to win $4 billion of new orders every year for such units, it said.

The company has won $13.5 billion in orders this year, achieving 90 percent of this year’s new order target, with an average contract price per vessel of $270 million, it said. (Bloomberg)

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Samsung Heavy gets 633.4-B won platform order

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