On 29th April 2016, Ophir announced that it had terminated its Fortuna farm-out discussions with Schlumberger. Back in January, Ophir announced that it had entered into a non-binding Heads of Terms Agreement with Schlumberger for upstream participation in the Fortuna FLNG development that would result in the oilfield service company carrying Ophir to first oil. However, the two companies have been unable to complete the transaction on the terms agreed and discussions have been terminated.
Ophir’s management must now demonstrate its continued confidence in its ability to attract an alternative partner for the FLNG project. Although development costs have continued to fall as studies continue, reservations still exist about any plans for Ophir to self-fund and sole risk this development.
Having completed the upstream FEED studies, gross upstream capex requirement from FID to first gas has been reduced again, to USD450-500million from USD600million. Ophir continues to progress the project, and fully-termed LNG sales agreements are nearing completion. Offtake selection has progressed to a decision between three alternative solutions. But given additional time is required to fully develop these options to binding agreements, FID has been pushed back to Q4 2016 with first gas now forecast for 2020.
0 comments:
Post a Comment