Golar LNG’s recent success in firming up plans for a Floating LNG project offshore Cameroon is already opening up doors to other potential stranded gas developments in the region, it has reported.

Under its ‘GoFLNG’ banner the company says its “tangible progress” with the Cameroon project (see DI, 19 January 2015, page 7) has “stimulated other interest in the region for fast-track, lower cost base, lower risk LNG solutions. Near-term effort is focused on West African opportunities for the deployment of the Golar Gimi from 2018”.

The company says that with the attributes of these projects, being generally clean, relatively dry gas, located near-shore or in areas of relatively benign met-ocean conditions, the board has “identified several interesting employment opportunities for Gimi, but much work remains to be done before the vessel can be fully committed”.

Some of the projects have potential capacity for more than one GoFLNG unit, it adds.

In January Golar LNG signed a Heads of Agreement (HOA) with Cameroon’s Societe Nationale de Hydrocarbures (SNH) and Perenco Cameroon for the development of a FLNG export project located 20 km offshore utilizing Golar’s GoFLNG liquefaction technology. The HOA is based on the allocation of 500 Bcf of gas reserves from the Kribi fields, to be exported to global markets via the first GoFLNG facility Golar Hilli, under construction at Keppel’s shipyard in Singapore. Production is anticipated to be around 1.2 MMtonnes of LNG per annum over an approximate 8-year period.

Golar says that as of end-January the overall Hilli FLNG project progress was 30.3% complete against scheduled progress of 25.5% (4.8% ahead of schedule). Cumulative value of work done, excluding the value of the original vessel, amounted to US $305 million at year end, $52 million of that being incurred in Q4. The company says the Hilli project is “comfortably within budget and on track for commencement of operations by the targeted April 2017”. It also added that the board and the partners have agreed a target date of June this year for the close-out of all technical and commercial matters pertinent to the fully termed agreements. Golar will be compensated on a fixed tariff basis for the FLNG unit.

Golar’s above-mentioned Golar Gimi is to be a speculative conversion into a second FLNGV facility, again to be built by Keppel. The Gimi will be delivered to Keppel Shipyard in the second quarter of this year. Golar expects the conversion to be completed and delivered in approximately 33 months.

The company did add that, to retain flexibility in the roll-out of the GoFLNG strategy, it has secured beneficial cancellation provisions, which if exercised prior to November this year will allow termination of the Gimi contracts and the recovery of previous milestone payments, less a set cancellation fee.