West Africa is becoming something of a focus for flng with planned projects pushing ahead off Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

Two consortia are facing off to win the feed contract for Ophir Energy’s Fortuna (SEN 32/3) flng project in Block R off Equatorial Guinea, while commercial terms have been agreed for a scheme off Cameroon. Both involve Golar LNG.

McDermott Marine Construction and GE Oil & Gas have paired up to go head-to-head against a Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions pairing to battle it out for the epcic contract for the Fortuna development.

Ophir 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.

A 20-well subsea production system has been mooted for the field in waters of 1,400-1,900m. Fortuna would be the first flng project in West Africa.

The feed process will be completed at the end of Q1 2016, which will allow a final investment decision to be made in mid-2016 with first gas expected in mid-2019.

Golar LNG, will build, own and operate the Gimi flng vessel, which will operate on the field, in return for a tariff. Golar will conduct a separate feed study for the midstream element of the project, which will begin shortly.

The Gimi is forecast to have a capacity of around 2.2mt/a. With this throughput, and the installation of late-life compression facilities, Ophir said the resources discovered in Block R to date are more than sufficient to deliver a production plateau of around 9.24mcm/d for over 30 years.

Analysis of the drill stem test conducted on the Fortuna 2 well in late 2014 demonstrated that the well contacted over 22.4bcm of gas in the Fortuna field.

This would mean the first phase of the Fortuna flng project is economically under-pinned by the 45 Bcm of contingent resource in the Fortuna and Viscata gas fields, Ophir said.

And with an incremental 28bcm of 2C resources discovered and immediately available to be developed, and a further 25bcm of low risked prospective resource, Ophir is considering contracting a second flng vessel for the project to help accelerate cash flows from Block R.

An investment decision for the second vessel is currently expected to be made once the Fortuna field has commenced production, with a view to it being operational by the middle of the next decade.

Nick Cooper, Chief Executive Officer of Ophir, said, 'The selection of flng to monetise our Block R resource base has drastically reduced gross development capex to first gas from the around $3bn estimates for a conventional LNG plant to about $800mn for flng, and has also reduced development lead time; thereby accelerating first gas by 2-3 years to 2019.’

Meanwhile, Golar LNG, Perenco and Societe Nationale de Hydrocarbures (SNH) have agreed commercial terms for the development of an flng project in Cameroon.

Final approval by all parties, including the government in Cameroon, for the tolling agreement and the midstream gas convention is anticipated in late Q3, 2015.

For the past two years, Golar, Perenco and SNH have been developing the flng project, located 20km off the coast of Cameroon, using Golar's floating liquefaction technology (GoFLNG).

The project will take in 14bcm of natural gas reserves from the offshore Kribi fields, which will be exported to global markets via the GoFLNG facility Golar Hilli, now under construction at the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore.

It is anticipated that the allocated reserves will be produced at a rate of 1.2mt/a of lng, representing approximately 50% of the vessel's nameplate production capacity, over around eight years. It is expected that production will commence in Q2, 2017.

Offshore