The plans get traction..

Firms mull joint LNG-FPSO project for New Guinea

Jul 30, 2010

Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor

LOS ANGELES, July 30 — Natural gas reserves off New Guinea are the target of a cooperative development agreement by DSME E&R, Hoegh LNG Ltd., and New Guinea’s state-owned Petromin PNG Holdings Ltd.

“With the [cooperative development agreement], the three companies will carry out a joint study to check validity for the development of several gas reserves of Papua New Guinea including one near Gulf of Papua,” said Kim Jin-seok, chief executive of DSME, a subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co.

“If a final investment decision is made by the end of this year after completing the feasibility study, we anticipate to begin production from the mid to late-2014 by using LNG-FPSO facilities built at the DSME shipyard in South Korea,” Kim said.

“We have agreed to work together by entering into a cooperative development agreement…to introduce the technology to Papua New Guinea,” the partners said.

“We have commenced an economic and technical feasibility study in order to provide a competitive option to any gas owners in the Gulf of Papua, including the ELK/Antelope LNG project,” they said.

In May, Daewoo disclosed details of its own generic LNG floating production, storage, and offloading unit at the Floating LNG 2010 meeting in Barcelona.

At the time, Brendan Jeong, Daewoo’s executive vice-president of marketing and engineering, said the company had developed a design for a 2 million tonnes/year LNG floater.

Jeong said the unit, which will be 310 m long, 65 m wide and 20.3 m high, will house eight tanks arranged in two rows and use a membrane-type containment system.

The unit would have capacity to supply 210,000 cu m of LNG, 20,000 cu m of LPG, and 40,000 cu m of condensate, with no filling limit in conditions up to a significant wave height of 14 m.

Hoegh LNG, which has developed its own LNG FPSO design, has been working with Daewoo on the FLNG project.

News of the agreement coincided with an emailed announcement by Daewoo it has won a $440 million order from American Eagle Tanker Inc. Ltd. of Malaysia to construct four 320,000-dwt oil tankers. Under the agreement, Daewoo will deliver the vessels by October 2013.