Speaking in a results briefing, Ophir chief operating officer Bill Higgs said that while “good progress” has been made on securing the midstream provider for its build, operate and tolling arrangement the company needs to finalise the chartering agreement to make that project real.
He says that once this is done, gas buyers will see the Fortuna FLNG project as being real and it will become easier to sign up offtakers.
“We’re progressing discussions on the chartering agreement and expect to move into FEED [front-end engineering and design] on both the upstream and midstream in the middle of the year,” Higgs said.
Excelerate was named as the chosen midstream provider for Fortuna in November. The company, which is working with Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) and topsides engineer Black & Veatch (B&V), will build, own and operate a three million tonne per annum (mtpa)-capacity floating liquefaction storage and offloading vessel (FLSO). First gas is due onstream in 2019.
Higgs says Equatorial Guinea is “exactly the right place to do FLNG”. He highlighted the area’s benign metocean conditions and detailed that the gas being recovered will require little processing, thereby reducing the cost of the FLNG unit.
Aside from Equatorial Guinuea, Ophir is pursuing a second three-train FLNG project in Tanzania.
