Ophir awards FEED contract for Fortuna FLNG project
LONDON -- Ophir Energy has awarded Upstream Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) contracts for the Fortuna FLNG Project in Block R, Equatorial Guinea, to two contractor consortia. The first consortia is comprised of McDermott Marine Construction Ltd. and GE Oil & Gas UK Ltd., and the second consists of Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions.
The Upstream FEED will be a competitive process with the scope of work including subsea development design that will enable the two competing FEED consortia to submit their EPCIC (Engineer, Procure, Construct, Install & Commission) tenders at the end of FEED, from which one will be selected for the final investment decision (FID).
Key focus areas for the FEED process will be defining the number of wells required at first gas, the cost of the development and the delivery time of the long lead subsea items, such as subsea trees, that are on the critical path to first gas.
The FEED process will be completed at the end of first-quarter 2016, which will allow an FID to be made in mid-2016, with first gas expected in mid-2019.
Golar LNG, the midstream partner, will build, own and operate the FLNG vessel, the Gimi, in return for a tariff. Golar will conduct a separate FEED study for the midstream element of the project, which will commence shortly.
The Gimi is forecast to have a capacity of about 2.2 Mtpa. With this throughput, and the installation of late-in-life compression facilities, the resources discovered in Block R to date are more than sufficient to deliver a production plateau of about 330 MMscfd for over 30 years.
Analysis of the drill stem test conducted on the Fortuna 2 well in late 2014 demonstrated that the well contacted over 800 Bcf of gas in Fortuna field. As such, the first phase of the Fortuna FLNG project is economically under pinned by the 1.6 Tcf of contingent resource in Fortuna and Viscata gas fields.
With an incremental 1 Tcf of 2C resources discovered and immediately available to be developed, and a further 900 Bcf of low risk prospective resource, Ophir is considering contracting a second FLNG vessel to develop these unallocated resources. A second vessel would both monetize currently unallocated resources and accelerate cash flows from Block R, thereby adding material value to the Block R FLNG program. An investment decision for the second vessel is currently expected to be made once Fortuna field has commenced production, with a view to it being operational by the middle of the next decade.
“With the appointment of Golar as midstream partner, and the commencement of FEED, the project has strong momentum. Ophir’s focus will now switch to securing buyers for the LNG offtake and to bringing in an equity partner prior to our mid-2016 FID. Numerous potential counterparties have recently expressed interest in the offtake and partnering opportunities,” Nick Cooper, Ophir’s CEO, said.
