Petrofac, First Reserve JV gets funds to finance two FPFs

Natixis, a French corporate and investment bank, has closed an underwriting mandate for a US$225m six-year facility to finance two floating production facilities for PetroFirst Infrastructure Ltd.

PetroFirst Infrastructure is a joint venture between energy focused private equity firm, First Reserve (80%) and UK-listed Petrofac Ltd (20%).

The US$1.25 billion joint venture, announced on 26 June 2014, will deploy capital both in purchasing a number of existing assets from Petrofac’s Integrated Energy Services (IES) division as well as in new energy infrastructure projects that utilize Petrofac’s development capability.

The new debt facilities have been provided to two special purpose companies, one holding a mobile offshore production unit “MOPU West Desaru” chartered to Petrofac Group and the other holding a floating production, storage and offloading facility “FPF-003” chartered to Mubadala Group. Proceeds from the financing will allow for the repayment of inter-company debt and shareholder loans.

Natixis acted as the sole Mandated Lead Arranger and Bookrunner, Underwriter, Facility Agent, Account Bank and Hedging Coordinator for the transaction. Syndication was launched on 4 July to a selective number of international financial institutions and closed in early August with an oversubscription, reflecting the high quality of this structured finance transaction as well as strong support to the First Reserve / Petrofac Joint Venture from the bank market.