Ophir Energy has awarded upstream FEED contracts for the Fortuna FLNG Project in Equatorial Guinea’s Block R to two contractor consortia. They are the McDermott Marine Construction Ltd. and GE Oil & Gas UK Ltd. consortium and the Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions consortium, a news release said.

The upstream FEED will be a competitive process with the scope of work including subsea development design that will enable the two competing FEED consortia to submit their engineer, procure, construct, install and commission (EPCIC) tenders at the end of FEED, from which one will be selected for FID, the release said.

Key focus areas for the FEED process will be defining the number of wells required at first gas, the cost of the development and the delivery time of the long lead subsea items, such as subsea trees, that are on the critical path to first gas.

The FEED process will be completed at the end of first-quarter 2016, which will allow a final investment decision to be made in mid-2016 with first gas expected in mid-2019, according to the release.

As announced in May, the midstream partner, Golar LNG, will build, own and operate the FLNG vessel, the Gimi, in return for a tariff. Golar will conduct a separate FEED study for the midstream element of the project, which will commence shortly, the release said. The Gimi is forecast to have a capacity of about 2.2 MTPA. With this throughput, and the installation of late-in-life compression facilities, the resources discovered in Block R to date are more than sufficient to deliver a production plateau of about 330 MMscf/d over 30 years, Ophir said in the release.

Analysis of the drillstem test conducted on the Fortuna 2 well in late 2014 demonstrated that the well contacted over 800 Bcf of gas in the Fortuna Field, the release said. The first phase of the Fortuna FLNG project is economically under pinned by the 1.6 Tcf of contingent resource in the Fortuna and Viscata gas fields.

With an incremental 1 Tcf of 2C resources discovered and immediately available to be developed, and a further 900 Bcf of low risked prospective resource, Ophir said it is considering contracting a second FLNG vessel to develop these unallocated resources. An investment decision for the second vessel is expected to be made once the Fortuna Field has commenced production.