Page 7 - LatAmOil Week 02 2022

LatAmOil MEXICO LatAmOil

Eni’s Miamte MV34 FPSO

arrives offshore Mexico

ENI (Italy) said in early January that it would programme that the Italian company submitted
soon install a newbuild floating production, last month.
storage and off-loading (FPSO) vessel at Area 1, Eni has argued that production is lagging
a shallow-water licence area located off the coast because of delays in the arrival of the FPSO.
of Tabasco state in the southern Gulf of Mexico. However, because of CNH’s rejection of its plans
In a statement, Eni reported that the FPSO, in mid-December, it will not be able to proceed
known as the Miamte MV 34, had arrived in with work in 2022 until it secures approval for
Mexican waters. It did not say exactly when the a new budget and programme. Eni, for its part,
vessel would be in place, but it did note that the said in its statement that it expected to see out-
Miamte MV 34 would have to be connected to put levels ramp up in the early part of this year.
a mooring system and commissioned before Area 1 is home to the Amoca, Mizton and
starting regular commercial operations. Tecoalli oilfields. It is believed to contain around
The FPSO will be able to handle 90,000 bar- 2.1bn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in place,
rels per day (bpd) of crude, the Italian company with crude oil accounting for around 90% of the
said. It will allow the Area 1 project “to achieve total. ™
the final production configuration,” it said.
According to other sources, the Miamte MV
34 was assembled at a shipyard in Singapore by
MODEC, an affiliate of Mitsui (Japan). The ves-
sel, which is capable of storing 700,000 barrels
of oil, was completed last autumn and began
sailing to Mexico on October 27.
The FPSO is slated to handle crude from the
Amoca and Mizton fields within Area 1. Mizton
has been in production since June 2019 and was
yielding around 15,000 bpd as of October 2021,
significantly less than the 25,000 bpd Eni had
previously anticipated for that date, and the dis-
crepancy led Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons
Commission (CNH) to reject the revised work Area 1 is a shallow-water block in the southern Gulf of Mexico (Image: Eni)

US VIRGIN ISL ANDS
WIPL says it will be able to cover $62mn

bid for Limetree Bay refinery

JAMAICA-BASED West Indies Petroleum Ltd The 350,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery
(WIPL) has expressed confidence about its abil- is currently owned by US-based Limetree Bay
ity to pay the sum of $62mn that it has offered for Ventures. The company was forced to sell the
the Limetree Bay refinery near St. Croix in the plant and its associated assets after declaring
US Virgin Islands by the due date of January 21. bankruptcy last year, and WIPL was named
Charles Chambers, the president and CEO as the top bidder in a US bankruptcy court on
of WIPL, told the Jamaica Observer in an inter- December 18.
view last week that his company was commit- If the Jamaican company does not pay the
ted to the deal and that he was certain that it promised $62mn for the facility by January 21,
would be able to meet the deadline. He did not though, Limetree Bay Ventures must offer it to
say exactly how WIPL intended to finance the the second-highest bidder – US-based St. Croix
transaction, though. Energy, which offered $57mn.

Week 02 13•January•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7