Golar LNG wraps up $575 million senior notes offering

Last week, Golar revealed that it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, $500 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due 2030 in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers.

The company also said it intends to grant the initial purchasers of the notes a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional $75 million aggregate principal amount of the notes in connection with the offering.

Golar announced the closing of its offering of 2.75 percent convertible senior notes due 2030 in a statement on Tuesday.

The company sold $575 million aggregate principal amount of the notes, including $75 million aggregate principal amount of the notes sold pursuant to the initial purchasers’ exercise in full of their 30-day option.

Golar used a portion of the net proceeds from the sale of the notes to repurchase 2.5 million of the company’s common shares in connection with the offering of the notes and intends to cancel these shares, reducing the total outstanding share count to 102.3 million shares.

Also, the Company plans to use the remaining net proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, future growth investments including a contemplated fourth FLNG unit, MKII FLNG conversion costs, FLNG Hilli redeployment costs, repaying indebtedness, and funding working capital and capital expenditures.

FLNG growth

Golar recently said it had signed a final engineering study to confirm EPC price and delivery for a 5 mtpa MKIII FLNG.

The company announced this in a statement, revealing that FLNG Gimi has reached the commercial operations date (COD) for its 20-year lease and operate agreement for the BP-led Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) project, offshore Mauritania and Senegal.

Golar said the COD triggers the start of the 20-year lease and operate agreement that unlocks the equivalent of around $3 billion of Adjusted Ebitda backlog.

Following the achieved COD of FLNG Gimi and announcement of the two FLNG charters in Argentina in May, Golar is accelerating work on its next FLNG unit(s).

“We continue to advance commercial discussions, with charterer demand guiding design choice of the fourth FLNG unit,” the company said.

“In addition to the 3.5 mtpa MKII option at CIMC Raffles shipyard, Golar has signed a final engineering study to confirm EPC price and delivery for a 5 mtpa MKIII FLNG and is updating price and schedule for an up to 2.7 mtpa MKI FLNG,” Golar said.

Golar currently has two operational floating LNG units, which were converted from LNG carriers, including the 2.7 mtpa FLNG Gimi, which is located at the GTA hub offshore Mauritania and Senegal.

Moreover, Pan American Energy, Golar LNG, YPF, Pampa Energia, and Harbour Energy recently took a final investment decision for the Southern Energy floating LNG export project in Argentina in May.

Under a 20-year charter deal, the 2.4 mtpa FLNG Hilli, which is currently located offshore Cameroon, will work for Southern Energy (SESA) offshore Argentina.

In addition, Golar and SESA have signed definitive agreements for a 20-year charter for the 3.5 mtpa MKII FLNG, currently under conversion at CIMC Raffles shipyard in Yantai, China.

This charter remains subject to FID.