Brazilian energy company Eneva has closed its previously announced deal with US LNG firm New Fortress Energy and joint venture partner Ebrasil to buy the Sergipe LNG power plant for about $1.29 billion.
This LNG-to-power project started commercial operations in 2020 and includes a regasification terminal served by the 170,00O-cbm Golar Nanook, and the 1,593 MW plant in Porto de Sergipe.
NFE, which had 50 percent in the plant and operates the FSRU, said in a statement on Monday that Eneva now owns 100 percent of the shares of the plant’s owner Celsepar.
Centrais Eletricas de Sergipe or Celse, a unit of Celsepar, is the project operator.
In addition to this deal, Eneva bought Cebarra, which owns 1.7 GW of expansion rights adjacent to the Celse power plant.
NFE to use funds for its LNG business
NFE said Energos Infrastructure, the company’s new joint venture with Apollo, would continue to operate Golar Nanook that remains chartered to Celse for more than 20 years.
The US LNG firm previously said the transaction with Eneva for the power plant would generate proceeds to NFE of about $550 million.
NFE said in the statement on Monday that a portion of the proceeds from the sale was used to pay off the entire outstanding balance of – and fully retire – the standby guarantee and credit facility agreement with GE Capital EFS Financing, while Eneva would assume the outstanding debt obligations of Celse.
“The closing of this transaction further deleverages and simplifies our capital structure and marks another significant step toward our goal of an investment grade credit rating,” Wes Edens, NFE’s chairman and CEO, said.
“We are pleased to redeploy these proceeds toward the capital needs of our Fast LNG program and downstream LNG projects worldwide, internally funding our strategic growth initiatives to serve our customers’ needs amid a structurally short global LNG market,” he said.