Ophir working to make Fortuna FLNG FID by 2016 end

Ophir Energy, a London-listed oil and gas company, is making progress with its floating LNG project in Equatorial Guinea where it is working on developing the gas reserves found in the offshore Block R.

The company on Thursday said the upstream part of the Fortuna FLNG project was ‘technically ready’ for a Final Investment Decision.

As for the downstream, Ophir says offtake portion is ready for a final group decision between the competing offtake offers.

“We have shortlisted four high quality, high credit-rated gas off-takers, all of whom are significant players in the LNG market,” Ophir said.

Also, on the upstream side, Ophir has boasted that the company has reduced estimated upstream costs from ca. $1 billion at the end of 2014 to ca. $450 million today.

Regarding the midstream portion of the value chain, the company said that Ophir and Golar LNG continue to explore ways to work together to monetize the discovered resource in the Fortuna field. Ophir added that the discussions are progressing well and both parties are working towards an FID decision being made before the end of 2016.”

To remind, in May 2015, Golar and Ophir reached an agreement whereby Golar would provide and operate the Gimi FLNG unit under a twenty-year charter term for the project. During this period it will be responsible for the sub-sea well control, receiving, liquefying and offloading the gas to LNG vessels.

“The value chain, and our understanding of costs along this value chain, are sufficiently mature that we estimate that Fortuna is the lowest cost greenfield LNG project in the market today. As such the Fortuna Project continues to offer compelling returns despite the low commodity price environment,” the company said on Thursday.