LNG

TechnipFMC has sold 17.6 million shares in Technip Energies, one of the world’s leading liquefied natural gas engineering companies, to Dutch firm HAL Investments.

The sale price of the shares was set at €11.15 ($13.20) per share, yielding total gross proceeds of €196.2 million.

HAL, which has a varied portfolio of international investments and is listed on the Euronext Exchange in Amsterdam, has agreed to a lock-up of 180 days for its shares in Technip Energies.

Upon completion of the sale, representing about 9.9 percent of the issued and outstanding share capital of Technip Energies, TechnipFMC is still left with a direct stake of around 12.3 percent of the shares in Technip Energies.

TechnipFMC completed a spin-off of Technip Energies in February 2021.

Technip Energies is now pursuing its own path as one of the leading LNG engineering companies with current LNG export projects in nations such as Russia, Mexico and Mozambique.

The spin-off reversed the 2017 merger of Technip of France and FMC Technologies of the US, a transaction valued at the time at $20Bln as it created TechnipFMC as a fully-integrated subsea and onshore provider and Technip Energies as a stand-alone company with the old Technip heritage.

Its portfolio also includes the construction of the world’s largest liquefaction Trains in Qatar with 7.8 MTPA of capacity.

In its most recent projects the Technip Energies division of the former TechnipFMC entity constructed Yamal LNG in Russia’s northern Siberia region with Japanese partners Chiyoda Corp. and JGC Corp.

It has also been contracted for Arctic LNG II by the same operator of Yamal, Russia’s Novatek, and is being partnered by Italy’s Saipem and Russian firm NIPIGas, a subsidiary of the Gazprom Neft Group, to construct a plant with almost 20 MTPA of output from three Trains.

Technip Energies, which is currently completing the Coral South FLNG project offshore Mozambique, was also awarded the Costa Azul export plant contract in Mexico by Sempra Energy.

TechnipFMC reported an improving market in offshore oil and gas in its first full earnings statement since spinning off the LNG and project engineering unit Technic Energies to become a separate company.

McDermott International, the leading LNG and energy project engineering company, has decided to invest in Lummus Technology Holdings, the company it sold as part of its restructuring to help emerge from financial difficulties over the last several years.

Under the terms of the asset purchase agreement for the sale of Lummus Technology, entered into with a joint partnership between Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd., a flagship company of The Chatterjee Group, and Rhône Capital, in January 2020, McDermott was provided the option to purchase a minority common equity ownership interest.

The Houston, Texas-based company said it had now exercised this option.

Lummus is a leading licensor of proprietary petrochemical, refining, gasification and gas processing technologies, and a supplier of catalysts, other equipment and related engineering services.

It became part of McDermott after the ill-timed takeover of CB&I, which itself had acquired Lummus for $950 million in 2007 from Swiss-Swedish power and automation company ABB.

“This agreement not only reinforces our already-robust and active relationship, but also reflects our support of, and belief in the Lummus long-term strategic plan,” said David Dickson, President and Chief Executive of McDermott.

“Together, we will continue to combine McDermott's iEPC delivery with Lummus's innovative technology solutions to our customers across the globe,” added Dickson.

The sale of Lummus was part of McDermott's comprehensive restructuring process, which McDermott successfully completed on June 30 in 2020 to help it emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Since the sale, McDermott and Lummus have continued to work together through their strategic agreement to connect customers to technology solutions.

McDermott is involved in some of the world’s leading LNG construction projects, including on the US Gulf Coast and the North Field Expansion in Qatar.

McDermott has additionally been engaged as a contractor on the Golden Pass LNG export project for Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil.

Qatar Petroleum announced in January 2021 that its North Field South (NFS) project front-end engineering and design contract had been awarded to McDermott.

McDermott has executed projects in Qatar's North Field for more than 30 years and said it would leverage its experience and resources for this contract.

The contract scope includes the replication of five offshore wellhead platforms.

The FEED contract will be executed from McDermott's office in the Qatari capital Doha and work would begin immediately.

Qatar’s LNG expansion involves production increasing from the current 77 million tonnes per annum to 110 MTPA and then to 126 MTPA by 2027.

Qatar has already started developing its drilling campaign for the Arab Gulf feed-gas from the North Field that will underpin the liquefaction needs at the Ras Laffan plant in Qatar.