Page 10 - GLNG Week 31

GLNG AUSTRALASIA GLNG
PNG backs Papua LNG agreement
POLICY
PAPUA New Guinea (PNG) Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua has said the government will stand behind the natural gas agreement it signed in April, paving the way for the development of the Papua LNG project.
Kua said the cabinet had on July 2 “agreed in principle” to honour the agreement sign with Total, Oil Search and ExxonMobil that set out the project’s scal framework.
“ e state has reserved its rights to discuss a shortlist of matters to be discussed with the developers,” Kua told reporters on August 4. “We believe that what we have discussed and agreed to are favourable and will not a ect the general economics and scal terms of the Papua LNG Gas Agreement.”
Total has a 31.1% operated interesting in the Petroleum Retention Licence 15 (PRL 15) joint venture, which is developing the Elk-Antelope gas discovery, post the state’s back-in right of 22.5%. ExxonMobil owns 28.3% and Oil Search has the remining 17.7%. e partners are work- ing towards a nal investment decision (FID) on Papua LNG, targeted for 2020.
e venture intends to add two 2.7mn tonne per year (tpy) trains to the existing ExxonMo- bil-operated PNG LNG. e US super-major is
also leading the development of PRL 3, which contains the P’nyang eld and will feed another new 2.7mn tpy train.
Kua’s comments come as something of a surprise a er several weeks of sabre-rattling over the agreement. The minister, who was appointed to his position on June 6, has been a vocal critic of the gas agreement signed by former prime minister Peter O’Neill, who resigned in May.
Kua indicated late last month that the agree- ment could be rewritten if a review found the terms to be unfavourable to the country.
“Any signatory to a contract can, any time after an agreement has been signed, go back to the negotiating table if they are, as an a er- thought, unsatis ed with certain aspects of the terms and conditions of the contract,” Kua told Reuters on July 25. “Our approach is purely com- mercial in nature.”
Commenting on the PNG government’s apparent change of heart, Oil Search man- aging director Peter Botten said on August 5 that his company was “encouraged by the statement made by the minister” and that he hoped development could now progress “in a timely manner”.™
EUROPE
Saipem signs up to Arctic LNG 2 joint engineering venture
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
ITALY’S Saipem has agreed to participate in a joint engineering venture to build the Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia alongside TechnipFMC and domestic rm NIPIgaspererabotka.
e joint venture will be responsible for the detailed design, procurement, fabrication, con- struction, commissioning and start-up of the LNG trains at the project. Under the contract, Saipem will have a €2.2bn ($2.5bn) share in the JV,whichwillbuildthreeLNGtrainsforthepro- ject. Each train will have the capacity to produce roughly 6.6mn tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG, and will be installed on concrete gravity based structure (GBS) platforms. e Italian company was awarded the contract to design and build the GBS platforms in December 2018.
France’s Total – which has a 10% stake in the Novatek-led Arctic LNG 2 project – said recently that the plant would be around a third cheaper to build than Russia’s Yamal LNG terminal thanks to Saipem’s GBS technology.
GBS platforms have been used o en in North Sea and elsewhere, but not in Russia.
e deal to participate in the joint venture is the latest in a series of agreements secured by Saipem for construction services on gas projects. In June, the company won a record $6bn con- tract for Anadarko Petroleum’s Mozambique LNG project, on which a nal investment deci- sion (FID) was made the same month. Saipem will be paid on a lump sum and reimbursement basis under the latest deal for Arctic LNG 2.
e project would be located in the Tazovsky district, in Russia’s autonomous administrative region of Yamal-Nenets. Novatek – Russia’s larg- est privately owned gas producer – holds a 60% stake in Arctic LNG 2. Alongside Total, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) each own 10%. And a Japanese consortium compris- ing Mitsui & Co. and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. (JOGMEC) recently agreed to share a further 10%.
An FID on Arctic LNG 2 is anticipated in the third quarter of this year, and the rst train is expected to come online by 2023.™
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