South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries and Japan’s JGC have won a contract to build the third floating LNG producer for Malaysian energy giant Petronas, according to shipbuilding sources.
In December 2021, Petronas confirmed the award of two front-end engineering design (FEED) contracts for a nearshore FLNG project in Sabah (ZLNG), saying that the winning FEED contractor would be rolled over to the EPCC phase by the end of this year, subject to FID.
Petronas awarded the FEED contracts to a consortium of SHI and JGC and Italy’s Saipem.
Saipem initially planned to work on the project with Hudong-Zhonghua but the firm later joined forces with China’s Wison and CMHI for the job, the sources told LNG Prime on Thursday.
The sources said that Petronas decided to choose SHI and JGC due to their experience as they already built the second FLNG, PFLNG Dua, for Petronas.
The contract is said to be worth between $2-3 billion.
SHI revealed a contract worth about $1.5 billion on Thursday for one marine production facility.
The shipbuilder said it would build the facility for an unnamed Asian shipowner and deliver it by August 2027.
SHI did not provide any further information regarding this contract.
Petronas’ FLNG production to rise to 4.7 mtpa
Petronas previously said it expected the nearshore LNG plant with a capacity of 2 million tonnes per annum to go online by end of 2026.
The firm said the design and construction of the nearshore plant would be simpler and upon completion, has the potential for improved production uptime as it would be located within a protected bay area as compared to an offshore floating LNG facility in the open seas.
Upon completion, the nearshore LNG plant would increase Petronas’ LNG production from floating LNG facilities from 2.7 mtpa to 4.7 mtpa.
Currently, Petronas operates two floating LNG facilities, namely the 1.2 mtpa PFLNG Satu as well as the 1.5 mtpa PFLNG Dua, both located offshore Sabah.
Petronas delivered 33 LNG cargoes from these two floating LNG producers during the January-September period of this year.