Samsung Construction and Trading Corp. of South Korea said it was awarded a contract valued at almost $500 million to build a second LNG import terminal for Malaysia, which is following an import-export strategy for the fuel.
The regasification facility will be constructed at Johor in the southern portion of Peninsular Malaysia and one of the most economically developed parts of the Asian nation.
Petronas Gas already operates a regasification terminal at Sungai Udang in Malacca with capacity to handle around 3.8 million tonnes per annum of LNG. At the same time it remains one of the world's largest LNG exporters and is planning Floating LNG production ventures.
The existing Malacca import facility is located on an island three kilometres offshore and entered commercial service in May 2013 to help the country boost natural gas supplies in Peninsular Malaysia as demand grows.
Samsung will provide the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning work for the new Johor regasification terminal.
The Johor terminal will have send-out capacity for 5 MTPA and two 200,000 cubic metres capacity LNG storage tanks. Samsung will work with a partner, Science-Tech Solutions, on the contract awarded by Petronas Gas Berhad, the natural gas subsidiary of state energy company Petronas.
The Korean company said construction was expected to be completed by April, 2018.
The regasification terminal is part of Malaysia's development plan to secure stable natural gas supply for the nearby Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development, Pengerang Co-generation Plant and also to the Peninsular Gas Utilization Grid.
Through its acquisition of UK company, Whessoe Engineering Ltd., a firm specialized in cryogenic tanks and regasification facilities, the Koreans look set to build up their LNG regas terminal portfolio.
"We feel privileged to participate in the RGT-2 project together with our partners," Samsung said.
"Based on our LNG experience and expertise, we look forward to contributing to development of the Malaysia's LNG industry, while maintaining a strict emphasis on site safety," the company added.
Malaysia has joined neighbour Indonesia as both an LNG producer and an importer.
Both Asian countries, still in the top four of global producers, are building up a network of regasification facilities to meet gas demand in certain geographical areas often not serviced with pipelines in the case of Indonesia.
Petronas intends to remain a serious exporter and is developing several new projects, two Floating liquefaction plants and a third for expansion of the onshore production complex at Bintulu in Sarawak.
The start-up of the first FLNG liquefaction facility over a stranded gas field is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2015. The liquefaction plant is scheduled to be moored about 180 kilometres off the coast of Bintulu and is designed to produce 1.2 million tonnes a year.
A second FLNG production project will be located off the coast of the state of Sabah and will produce 1.5 MTPA as it also taps into a stranded gas field.
Petronas is additionally expanding its onshore LNG production at Bintulu, where a ninth liquefaction Train is being constructed.
The onshore Train 9 project would add 3.6 MTPA to the nation's output. When the three projects actually come on stream then Malaysia's LNG output will climb to over 30 MTPA by 2017.
