Exmar Sees Bright Future in LNG Liquefaction Floating Units
The Belgian gas tanker shipping company Exmar has ordered Wison Offshore & Marine to undertake a second floating liquified natural gas unit.
Wison will be responsible for the turnkey engineering, procurement, construction, transportation, installation and commissioning of the FLNG liquefaction unit, which will be a self-contained barge with a liquefaction capacity of 0.6 million tons per year and 20,000 m³ of LNG storage. The FLNG will be constructed at Wison’s shipyard in Nantong, China, where also the construction of Exmars' first FLNG is nearing completion. T
The first "Caribbean" FLNG, a mutual project from Exmar and the Columbian company Pacific Rubiales Energy will start operating near the Colombian coast in the second half of 2015. The second FLNG installation will be operating along the west bank of the Douglas Channel near Kitimat in the Canadian province British Columbia. In this project Exmar's partners are LNG Partners-LLC and LNG Bargeco. The installation will have a capacity of 0, 7 million tons per year.
According to Exmar, the second FLNG unit, which is scheduled to be completed in 2017, will enable it to offer a reliable and more cost-efficient LNG production facility to its customers compared to land-based solutions and to play a major role in the further development of LNG infrastructures.
Exmar considers its nearshore barge based FLNG concept as a strong competitive advantage, as it will allow faster monetisation of existing gas reserves. Therefore, the Antwerp based shipping company also secured additional firm options for two more FLNG’s.
"Lower oil and gas prices will continue to boost demand for cost-efficient and fast-track FLNG solutions over land-based liquefaction terminals," states CEO Nicolas Saverys. "Thanks to our first mover advantage we are actively working on seven FLNG projects around the world. With this second FLNG contract we take another key step towards further strengthening our unique position in the FLNG market." However, Saverys did not provide silent any additional information or timing on the five additional projects.
Koen Mortelmans