LNG

Air Products, the leading industrial gases company and LNG equipment-maker, said it planned to build new gas plants and expand pipelines in the northwest Malaysian state of Penang.

JGC Holdings Corp., the leading Japanese LNG and energy project engineer, has been awarded the contract for the front-end engineering and design of Nigeria’s first floating LNG project along with Europe’s Technip Energies.

The project is being developed by UTM Offshore Limited, an indigenous private company in Nigeria engaged primarily in crude oil sales and an established provider of marine logistic support services to the oil and gas sector.

UTM is the parent company of UTM FLNG Ltd, which previously awarded a contract to JGC for the conceptual design of the FLNG facility.

“Consequently, the consortium of JGC Corp. and Technip has now been awarded the contract for the FEED of an FLNG plant producing 1.2 million tonnes per annum of LNG and other products including liquefied petroleum gas and condensate, with the completion date for the FEED slated for December 2023,” explained JGC whose headquarters are in Kanagawa, Japan.

Topside design

JGC explained that it would be primarily responsible for the topside design covering the LNG production facilities while Technip would handle the hull and the mooring system design.

“We believe this award duly reflects the satisfaction of the client with the conceptual design performed by JGC as well as the outstanding track record and project execution capabilities of the JGC Group and Technip Energies in the field of FLNG,” declared JGC.

“Upon completion of the FEED, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase is envisaged and, if realized, this will be the first FLNG facility in Nigeria and a milestone project for the country,” said JGC.

JGC has delivered the EPC for two previously completed FLNG facilities for Petronas of Malaysia, and together with Technip and for the Coral South FLNG project in Mozambique that shipped its first cargo in November 2022.

However, Ngeria has lagged behind other African nations such as Cameroon, Mozambique and newcomers like Mauritania and Senegal in establishing FLNG facilities for its extensive natural gas resources. and associated gas in oil fields.

Onshore expansion

Nigeria operates the onshore LNG plant at Bonny Island in the Niger Delta where output dropped for a second year in 2021 to 16.42 million tonnes, down almost 22 percent from the 21MT shipped in the previous year.

NLNG is also hoping to move forward faster and develop its long-awaited Train 7 project.

The NLNG onshore plant with six liquefaction Trains is owned by four shareholders, Shell, the French and Italian majors TotalEnergies and Eni as well as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), which holds 49 percent of the venture.

The onshore Train 7 contract will also have a de-bottlenecking programme and would add around 8 MTPA of capacity to the Bonny Island facility, taking the total nameplate capacity to around 30 MTPA in the future.

Petronas, the Malaysian oil and gas company and leading floating LNG plant operator, has announced a 50th cargo lifting from the “PFLNG Satu” production hull, the first in the world to operate over a stranded gas field.

Malaysian energy company Petronas has reported a fire at its main onshore liquefied natural gas production plant at Bintulu, located in the eastern state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

Petronas, the Malaysian oil and gas company and LNG exporter and developer, is assessing front-end engineering and design (FEED) tenders for its third floating LNG production hull.

BASF Group, the German oil and gas and chemicals company, said the latest Malaysian floating LNG production hull owned by Petronas had selected BASF’s “OASE purple” process for its Acid Gas Removal Unit.

BASF, headquartered in the Rhine River city of Ludwigshafen, said the Petronas-owned vessel, the “PFLNG Dua”, is the first global user of the process.

The German company noted that Petronas successfully started up “FLNG Dua” in February 2021 and completed its performance test run in May 2021.

Petronas, the world leader in FLNG output, said in January 2021 that the “PFLNG Dua” had entered production in a joint venture with Thailand’s energy company PTTEP over the Rotan gas field offshore Sabah.

The vessel is deployed over the gas located 140 kilometres off Kota Kinabalu in Sabah state on the northern part of the island of Borneo.

The “PFLNG Dua” was constructed at the South Korean shipyard, Samsung Heavy Industries.

The first Petronas LNG hull, “PFLNG Satu”, became the world’s first FLNG vessel to start commercial operations in 2017 over the Kanowit gas field offshore Sarawak, another Malaysian state on Borneo.

Output

The “PFLNG Dua” has production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of LNG per annum.

BASF said its “OASE purple” process is an amine-based solution that is utilized for the removal of acid gases such as carbon-dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen-sulfide (H2S) from natural gas.

The removal of acid gases is necessary to prepare the gas for the liquefaction and subsequent pipeline transportation.

“The highly efficient and environmentally friendly BASF technology provides flexibility and low capital expenditure for its customers,” said BASF.

“Additionally, the low energy demand of the process combined with the non-corrosive nature of the solvent keeps operating and maintenance costs (OPEX) low,” the German company added.

BASF explained that the process also provided a high level of gas purity and gas recovery while keeping solvent losses to a minimum.

“We are proud to now have our first FLNG reference in operation and running at 100 percent capacity, which is the fruit of many years of research,” said Andreas Northemann, Head of BASF’s Gas Treatment business.

“We applied our onshore LNG expertise and conducted motion studies and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to ensure a high reliability, low maintenance design which meets our customer’s stringent offshore specifications and challenges,” added Northemann.

The leading Asian LNG exporting nations, Malaysia and Indonesia, are set to see their state-backed energy companies Petronas and Pertamina, removed from US investment bank JPMorgan’s self-appointed policing of what are called Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.

Royal Dutch Shell said its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas export plant off the coast of northwest Australia would not resume full production this year after being shut down in February 2020 because of safety issues.

Petronas, the Malaysian state energy company and stakeholder in major LNG projects from Australia to Canada, has formally installed its new President and Group Chief Executive Muhammad Taufik Tengku Aziz in succession to Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin.

Petronas, the Malaysian state-backed energy company with onshore and floating liquefied natural gas plants, reported a near 70 percent fall in first-quarter profits as almost 10 million tonnes of LNG were sold amid declining crude oil and LNG prices.

Petronas said that profit after tax for the period from January through March 2020 fell to 4.5 billion Malaysian ringgit ($1.03Bln) from 14.2Bln ringgit ($3.25Bln) in the same period last year, a drop of 68 percent.

Without the asset write-downs because of the market challenges of 4.67Bln ringgit ($1.07Bln), profits would have totalled 9.2Bln ringgit ($2.10Bln).

Petronas revenues for the quarter were 59.6Bln ringgit ($13.65Bln), a decline of 4 percent on the 61.99Bln ringgit ($14.20Bln) in the prior-year quarter.

The company’s LNG and gas earnings performances are part of the Gas and New Energy division report.

Petronas said quarterly pipeline natural gas sales were 13.4 percent lower at 2,566 million standard cubic feet per day compared with 2,962 mmscf per day in the 2019 first quarter.

“Malaysia average sales gas volume for the first quarter of 2020 was lower by 396 mmscf per day compared to the first quarter of 2019, mainly driven by lower offtake from power sector in Peninsular Malaysia,” said Petronas.

LNG sales rose 6.5 percent in the quarter to 9.99MT compared with 9.40MT in the same three months of 2019.

Petronas has produced LNG at its Bintulu onshore LNG complex since 2013 and its FLNG plant offshore Sabah, giving combined production of more than 26 million tonnes per annum, making the nation the largest Asian producer and the fourth-largest exporter in the world after Australia, Qatar and the US.

The Malaysian company also receives LNG offtake as a shareholder in the Gladstone LNG export plant in Queensland, Australia. Its overseas volumes will also increase in the next few years when LNG Canada comes on stream.

“The gross LNG sales volume for the first quarter was higher by 0.59 million tonnes compared to the first quarter, mainly attributable to higher trading activities as more opportunities arose due to increased liquidity,” explained Petronas.

Gas and New Energy revenue was 22.5Bln ringgit ($5.15Bln), down 8 percent from a year ago, mainly due to the impact of lower average LNG realised prices, partially offset by the effect of a weakening ringgit against US dollar.

Petronas President and Chief Executive, Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, said the company like others had suffered the ongoing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse in oil prices.

“The oil and gas industry has been badly affected by the unprecedented twin shock of both supply and demand,” he added.

“For our operations, we ensured that we continue to optimally operate our total business value chain, as safely and efficiently as possible, to fulfil the energy needs of the nation and to our customers globally,” explained Wan Zulkiflee .

“For 2020, we are planning to reduce our Capex by 21 percent and lower our operating expenditure by 12 percent, compared to what we had budgeted for previously,” stated the CEO.

After the end of the first quarter, Petronas had signed a sales and purchase agreement in May for an LNG tank filling facility at Sarawak for onward shipment to China in ISO containers.

The Malaysians signed the SPA with Tiger Clean Energy Ltd via a video teleconference because of the Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Petronas will supply Tiger Clean Energy at Bintulu in Sarawak.

LNG supplied in the ISO containers would subsequently be distributed to remote locations in China out with the pipeline grid, which is a widespread service for Chinese gas users supplied by truck.