The battle to win the contract to design and build a world-class Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) unit to be used by Italy’s Eni and its partners on a mega-gas project offshore Mozambique is coming to the boil, with competitors to submit their combined FEED and EPCIC proposals in the next few weeks.

The operator’s Coral FLNG project in deepwater Area 4 is set to have a process capacity of between 2.5-3 MMtpa, with Eni planning to take the Final Investment Decision (FID) during the third quarter of this year. LNG offtake agreements are also at an advanced stage of negotiation, with key terms to be agreed in the next few weeks.

The field’s declaration of commerciality and plan of development were submitted to the government earlier this year.

The FEED (Front End Engineering and Design) process itself kicked off in May last year, with the technical studies on the topsides, hull and subsea systems being done by three consortia in parallel due for completion by the end of April, with the full EPCIC (Engin­eering, Pro­cure­ment, Construction, Installation and Commis­sioning) commercial bids expected to go in by the end of May.

The consortia chasing the work are KBR-Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, Technip-JGC-Samsung Heavy Industries, and Saipem-Chiyoda-Hyundai Heavy Industries (see DI, 27 October 2014, page 1), it is understood.

Eni is building up a real head of steam on its east African mega-projects, with its parallel plans also progressing well for its Mamba onshore LNG development, which will see it install two 5 MMtpa LNG trains to receive gas in a first phase from the deepwater Mamba field, which is to the north of Coral and partly contained in the same block. The Italian is of course developing that field in partnership with Anadarko Petroleum, the operator of adjacent Area 1 that Mamba extends into. Competitive FEED and EPCIC contracts are expected to be awarded during the second half of this year for Mamba, with an FID planned by the turn of the year or early in 2016.

Area 4 contains more than 85 Tcf of gas in place, with all the offshore developments helped by the country’s supportive legal framework, established at the end of 2014 when the new decree law was passed.

It also represents a significant area for further potential FLNG awards, as the eventual winner of this first unit is understood would be in a strong position to pick up additional replica units if Eni opts to place further facilities on the large and remote gas field complex. The operator has previously been reported to be considering at least one more unit, following the increasingly popular ‘design one, build two’ phil­osophy being employed globally offshore to help reduce development costs.

The FLNG facility itself will be a turret-moored double-hull vessel, and once installed will sit in around 2,000 m (6,562 ft) of water in the Rovuma Basin, and some 48 km (30 miles) offshore. It is expected to start producing by the end of 2019.

Eni holds a 50% interest in the block as operator, with its partners being KOGAS, Galp Energia and ENH (10% each) and CNPC (20%).