Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Petromin to run floating LNG plant

By JUNIOR UKAHA

 

PETROMIN Holdings Ltd has been granted permission by the National Executive Council to operate a floating LNG processing facility  in the Gulf of Papua, The National reports.

The liquefied natural gas floating, processing, storing and offloading facility (LNG FPSO) will be the first of its kind to be built by state-owned Petromin and its partners.

The NEC unanimously agreed to let Petromin use this technology to develop the rich gas deposits in parts of Kerema and Western province, based on a special meeting on Dec 2.

Petromin managing director Joshua Kalinoe said the LNG FPSO is a state-of-the-art all in one receiving, processing, storing and off-loading facility that was condensed in just one small area measuring roughly the size of three soccer fields (380m).

He said compared to the same facility built on land, the FPSO occupies a small space, was cost effective and could be rearranged in new positions. 

The facility has mooring enclaves for tankers to load processed gas and has office complexes for technical workers to reside on and work.

According to Kalinoe, once completed, the FPSO will produce three trillion tonnes of cubic liters of gas per annum and is safe and environmentally friendly as it is constructed using front end engineering design (Feed) techniques in the oil and gas industry.

Kalinoe said although the facility is not being built yet, he is confident Petromin would  get it running in mid 2014 or early 2015 if upstream gas sources were firmly secured.

The facility will be built in South Korea by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) at an estimated cost of US$2.3 billion and will be shipped to PNG.

The proposed project is a joint venture between Petromin (34% share), DSME (33% share) and Hoegh LNG of Norway (33%) share.

Kalinoe said what Patromin was embarking on is “a stand alone possibly third LNG project that will unite smaller petroleum retention licence (PRL) holders giving them a total solution” to some of the problems they face.

 

 

 

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