Ophir Awards Upstream FEED Deals for E.Guinea's Fortuna FLNG Project

Ophir Energy announced Thursday that it has awarded Upstream Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) contracts for the Fortuna FLNG Project in Block R, Equatorial Guinea to two contractor consortia, (i) McDermott Marine Construction Ltd and GE Oil & Gas UK Ltd and (ii) 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 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 1Q 2016, which will allow a Final Investment Decision to be made in mid-2016 with first gas expected in mid-2019.

As announced in May, the midstream partner, Golar LNG, 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 c. 2.2 million tons per annum (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 c.330 MMscf/d (55,000 boepd) 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 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas in the Fortuna field, highlighting the world class nature of the reservoir. As such, the first phase of the Fortuna FLNG project is economically under pinned by the 1.6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of contingent resource in the 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 risked 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 the Fortuna field has commenced production, with a view to it being operational by the middle of the next decade.

Commenting on the award, Nick Cooper, CEO of Ophir, said: