South Korea’s HD Hyundai, formerly known as Hyundai Heavy Industries, has won a deal to build a floating production unit for an offshore project in Mexico.
HD Hyundai said in a stock exchange filing that it won a deal to build an FPU for an undisclosed client in Mexico.
According to the statement, the contract is worth around $1.2bn. The FPU will be built in HD Hyundai’s shipyard in the southeastern port of Ulsan and is scheduled to be delivered to the client in April 2027.
Although HD Hyundai did not name the client, South Korean media outlets said that the client in question was Australia’s Woodside. Namely, the FPU will be built for the recently approved $7.2bn Trion project in the Perdido basin in the Gulf of Mexico some 30 kilometres off the Mexico-US maritime border.
Other media outlets have previously listed HD Hyundai as the frontrunner in the competition to win the contract for the Trion FPU.
First oil is set for 2028 and the development is targeting an estimated 479 mmboe of best estimate (2C) contingent resource of oil and gas.
Trion will include the installation of an FPU, an FSO, and 18 wells – nine producers, seven water injectors, and two gas injectors – drilled in the initial phase. A total of 24 wells will be drilled over the life of the Trion project.
The 44,000-ton FPU will be able to produce 100,000 barrels of crude oil and 4.1 million cubic meters of natural gas per day and will be connected to an FSO vessel with a capacity of 950,000 barrels of oil.
Pemex discovered Trion in 2012 and currently owns 40% of the project. Woodside holds the remaining 60% which it acquired via the acquisition of BHP Petroleum in 2022.
A report in the South Korean media indicates that HD Korea Shipbuilding – the owner of HD Hyundai, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, and Hyundai Samho – has clinched $14bn worth of orders to build 105 vessels and one FPU, or 89% of its yearly order target of $15.74bn.
