Athens: Houston-based Excelerate Energy has nixed its plans to order a $2bn floating liquefaction storage and offloading (FLSO) unit from Samsung Heavy Industries.
A filing to the Seoul stock exchange today said Samsung’s client had “decided not to proceed with further consultations on planned investment due to changes in Equatorial Guinea LNG production projects”.
In November 2014, Excelerate signed a non-binding MOU with Ophir Energy to be its midstream partner and provide a FLSO vessel at the Fortuna LNG project, Equatorial Guinea.
When the MOU was announced, the shipyard told press it expected to sign an agreement with Excelerate “within the next year” after the front-end engineering design was drawn up.
As Splash reported in May, Excelerate has been replaced by Golar LNG as midstream partner on the Fortuna LNG project and has agreed to supply Ophir Energy with its GoFLNG vessel Gimi.
Ophir’s MOU with Excelerate was dissolved by “mutual agreement” of both parties, a spokesman told Splash last month.
Golar’s Gimi is currently being converted from a Moss-type LNG carrier into a FLNG vessel at Keppel Shipyard, Singapore. Completion of the conversion is expected in late 2017.
Excelerate is currently awaiting delivery of eight 173,400-cbm floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) from South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME). The units are set to arrive from this year until early 2017.
Splash has contacted Excelerate for comment.
