JBIC, INPEX Pen $600 Mln Loan Deal for Prelude FLNG Project in Australia

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC; Governor: Hiroshi Okuda) signed today, a loan agreement amounting up to 600 million U.S. dollars (JBIC portion) with INPEX CORPORATION (INPEX). The loan is cofinanced with Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd., The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd. and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, with the overall cofinancing amount totaling 1 billion U.S. dollars.

The loan is intended to finance INPEX Oil & Gas Australia Proprietary Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of INPEX in Australia, for acquiring, from Australian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell (Britain and Netherlands; Shell), a 17.5% participating interest in the block containing the Prelude and Concerto gas fields, located approximately 475km north-northeast of Broome, off the coast of Western Australia, and for producing natural gas and processing it into liquefied natural gas (LNG) by utilizing floating LNG (FLNG) technology.

FLNG technology is a new gas development technology whereby natural gas from offshore gas field is processed into liquid and stored on a large vessel equipped with an LNG plant and directly offloaded to an LNG carrier for shipment. Compared to constructing a liquefaction plant onshore, it does not need to lay down gas pipelines or develop the onshore area for installing conventional facilities including liquefaction plant. Therefore, it requires less initial investments and minimizes the environmental impact. In addition, since an FLNG vessel can move to other offshore gas fields, it is promising way of developing small- and medium-scale offshore gas fields. Participating in the world’s leading FLNG Project led by Shell will also serve INPEX to acquire knowhow on FLNG projects.

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Press Release, February 6, 2013