December 18, 2003

MOL Wins Contract to Transport Facilities
for China's Largest Ethylene Plant

TOKYO - Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL; President: Kunio Suzuki) today announced that the company has received an order to transport facilities mainly from Japan and South Korea to The Nanhai Petrochemicals Project, the largest ethylene plant in China. JGC Corporation is building the plant in the city of Huizhou, Guangdong Province.

The total volume of the order will be 150,000 tons including about 2,500 TEU of containerized cargo. In addition, a large volume of heavy-weight equipment in the 1,000-, 500-, and 100-ton class, will be shipped independently. This includes the 1,300-ton C3 rectifier*, which is the heaviest cargo of the project.

MOL will transport the cargo using a large-scale, shallow-draft ocean going barge, the 150-ton heavy lifter Gaia Triumph launched in October, the Poseidon Triumph slated for launch in January 2004, and local barges, which can be used in the shallow port facilities of Daya Bay, Guangdon Province, where the cargo will be discharged. The 1,300-ton C3 rectifier is the heaviest cargo ever ordered by JGC and also heaviest cargo MOL has ever transported. MOL will meet this challenge by drawing upon decades of experience in the reliable handling of heavyweight cargo.

MOL has worked aggressively to organize its own fleet of heavy lifters and promote business tie-ups with both domestic and overseas partners to meet needs for sea and land transport of plant equipment and other cargo transport for China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. This order reflects the success of those efforts. The company will continue working to win similar large-scale orders in the future.

Outline of the Nanhai Petrochemicals Project
This project is the ethylene complex production plant under development by a joint venture CNOOC and Shell Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (CSPC) established by Royal Dutch/Shell Group and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), one of China's major oil companies. In November 2002, JGC Corporation received the order for design, construction, and test operation of the ethylene plant (lower olefin process) that is the core of this project. Several petrochemical plant construction projects are currently under way in China. This plant for CSPC in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, is the largest, with total investment of US$4.3 billion. After completion in the second half of 2005, it is expected to produce an annual 2.3 million ton of petrochemical products.

Note: The C3 rectifier is a distillation tower some 100m high. It separates product propylene and residual propylene by applying additional precision distillation to reserved crude C3 (propane) that is separated during the gas distillation process. The rectifier will be manufactured by Hitachi Zosen Corporation and shipped from Sakai port.