Shanghai: In a huge coup for Chinese LNG construction ambitions, Shanghai’s Wison Group has been selected for an ambitious new North American gas venture.
EDF Trading and Exmar have joined forces to look for small-scale LNG export opportunities in North America using barge-mounted natural gas liquefaction developed by Exmar, Wison and Black&Veatch.
The aim is be to bring mobile, self-contained liquefaction units to LNG import terminals in the US using existing pipeline, tank and jetty infrastructure to enable LNG export.
EDF Trading and Exmar have secured the support of the Wison Group for the provision of turn-key EPCIC services for the construction and commissioning of barge-mounted liquefaction plants. These plants will make use of Black&Veatch’s proven PRICO single mixed refrigerant liquefaction technology but no commercial terms of the arrangements were disclosed.
"We are honored to join EDF Trading in their LNG export ambitions", said Nicolas Saverys, ceo of Exmar. "Building on the experience of EXMAR-Wison-Black&Veatch gained in Colombia, we can deliver a proven, reliable, cost-efficient and fast solution catered to individual project requirements".
“Barge-mounted liquefaction is a cost-effective and efficient method of producing LNG”, said John Rittenhouse, chief executive of EDF Trading. “It is also potentially the quickest route to market and scalable to fit a wide range of applications. We are very pleased to be working with experienced partners like Exmar and Wison,” he said.
EDF Trading is a leading player on the global gas and LNG wholesale markets. It has its own portfolio of gas assets including production, transmission, transportation, re-gasification, long-term supply and storage. It is the fifth largest marketer of gas in North America and markets around 7.2bn cu ft of gas a day with firm storage capacity in excess of 47bn cu ft.
Exmar is one of the best known names in LNG transportation.
The Wison Group is the largest private EPC contractor in China specialising in the design and construction of petrochemical and coal gasification facilities. Wison Offshore & Marine is a leading contractor to the international offshore oil and gas industry.
Last July Wison Offshore & Marine won a contract from Exmar for the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning (EPCIC) of the world’s first Floating LNG Liquefaction, Regasificationand Storage Unit (FLRSU). The facility (artist’s impression, pictured) will be used by Exmar under a Build, Own, and Operate contract with Pacific Rubiales Energy Corporation, and located on the Caribbean coast offshore Colombia. Commercial operations are planned to commence from the fourth quarter of 2014.
The FLRSU consists of a non-propelled barge equipped to convert 69.5m standard cu ft per day of natural gas into LNG that will be temporarily stored in onboard tanks with a total capacity of 14,000 cu m and subsequently offloaded either to a permanently-moored floating storage unit or shuttle tankers. The facility will be moored to a jetty and supplied with gas by pipeline from the onshore La Creciente field, located in the Lower Magdalena Valley Basin.
Wison Offshore & Marine is responsible for the design and engineering of the unit from its Shanghai operational centre with construction to be performed at Wison’s wholly-owned fabrication facility located in Nantong, China, and further support supplied from the company’s subsidiary in Houston.
In the same month Wison also won a deal to supply a newbuild floating LNG regasification unit (FRU) to VGS Group of New Jersey for installation offshore India.
The FRU, which will be owned by VGS Group, will consist of a non-propelled barge equipped to perform the regasification of approximately 3.5m tonnes a year of LNG supplied from trading tankers and will subsequently import the gas via pipeline into the Indian market. It is also being built in Nantong.
The latest deal with Exmar and EDF propels Wison to the forefront of LNG infrastructure construction in the world. [14/02/13]
