LNG

Galp Energia, the Portuguese oil and gas company whose most valuable upstream assets has been its stake in one of Africa’s prolific natural gas basins and LNG projects offshore Mozambique, says a new discovery off the southwest African nation of Namibia could contain 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent or more.

Italian oil and gas major Eni said it closed the sale to Anglo-French energy company Perenco of Eni’s participation interest in several upstream permits in the Republic of the Congo in West Africa.

March 7 (LNGJ) - Royal Boskalis B.V., the Dutch subsea and dredging company with activities in the LNG sector, has concluded an “historic” 2023 in terms of both revenue and earnings. Revenue increased by 20 percent to €4.28 billion ($4.65Bln) from €3.58Bln in 2022. Net profit increased by nearly 150 percent to €601 million from €241M in the previous year.

   “It was a particularly successful year for Boskalis, in which we broke many records,” said Peter Berdowski, Chief Executive of Boskalis. “It is great to see that all parts of the business contributed to these impressive figures. All our employees deserve a big compliment for the dedication, professionalism and teamwork with which we were able to achieve these successes,” added Berdowski. Boskalis has worked on projects such as the Mozambique FLNG joint venture in southeast Africa.

Italian major Eni said it had begun to introduce feed gas into the “Tango FLNG” floating production plant ahead of the shipping of the first cargo in a project located offshore the Republic of Congo in West Africa.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has signed an accord with Chinese shipyard Wison Heavy Industry for the construction of a floating liquefied natural gas production unit to be deployed offshore Nigeria.

TotalEnergies, the operator of the Mozambique onshore liquefied natural gas project, is moving towards re-starting the joint venture once the recommendations of a commissioned humanitarian report are carried out during 2023.

The Republic of the Congo has formally launched two floating liquefied natural gas production projects that may make the West African nation an LNG exporter by as early as this year as African nations assume leadership of the FLNG sector to monetize their resources backed by Western oil majors.

The East African nation of Tanzania said contract preparations are under way with Norwegian energy major Equinor and UK-based Shell to construct a $30 billion liquefied natural gas export project.

Feb 23 (LNGJ) - Eni, the Italian oil and gas major, reported increased annual net profits of €13.31Bln ($16.08Bln) compared with €5.82Bln in the previous year. However, profits plunged in the fourth quarter to €550 million from €3.52Bln in the same three months of 2021 because of special items, including reduced fair-valued commodity derivatives of €1.1Bln, asset impairments of €900M and an extraordinary solidarity tax of €700M.

   Eni’s LNG sales in 2022 dropped by 14 percent to 9.4 million tonnes from 10.9MT in 2021, impacted by lower supply from Russia and Nigeria. In LNG project activities, Eni noted that in November the first loading of LNG produced from the Coral Sul FLNG project offshore Mozambique was completed. In December, as part of the Congo LNG project from Eni’s gas reserves in block Marine XII, a turn-key contract was signed to build, install and commission an FLNG vessel. Eni will pair the “Tango FLNG” vessel purchased earlier from Exmar to speed up development plans. Congo LNG output should reach 3 MTPA in 2025.

JGC Holdings Corp., the Japanese energy engineering company with current major liquefied natural gas project work in progress, reported a 30 percent jump in nine-month sales as the Yokohama-based company maintained a healthly backlog of contracts.

JGC said nine-month sales came to 416.6 billion yen ($3.17 billion) compared with 319.4Bln ($2.43Bln) in the period to the end of December 2021.

Among the contracts won by JGC was as head of a consortium with South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries for the construction of a nearshore floating LNG project in Malaysia planned by national oil and gas company Petronas.

This facility will be the third floating LNG plant to be constructed for an offshore gas fields in Malaysia. It will have minimum production capacity of 2 million tonnes per annum of LNG and was scheduled for completion in 2027.

JGC’s main responsibilities will cover the engineering, procurement and commissioning work for the FLNG topside, the associated onshore facilities as well as the management of the overall project.

JGC’s consortium partner SHI would be responsible for the FLNG hull EPC work and the modular fabrication of the topside.

The company’s earnings statement showed operating profits rose to 25.3Bln ($185 million) versus 15.3Bln yen ($116M) in the period.

Net profits amounted to 22.5Bln yen ($171 million), down from 44.3Bln yen $337M) in the prior year nine-month period.

JGC’s contracts backlog was 1.58 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) at the end of December 2022.

LNG Canada

The company was also still working towards completion of the LNG Canada project at Kitimat in British Columbia being constructed by Shell and partners. JG's partner on the venture is Fluor Corp. of the US.

JGC was additionally involved in the successful completion of the Coral South floating LNG venture offshore Mozambique for Italian energy company Eni and partners.

FLNG is one of JGC’s speciality spheres and it has been retained along with Europe's Technip Energies for the front-end engineering and design for a similar project offshore Nigeria.

Other JGC outstanding energy industry contracts include the Basra Oil Refinery modernization, the construction of an oil-gas separation unit in Saudi Arabia as well as LNG import terminal work in Taiwan.