Offshore staff
FAVERSHAM, UK – Douglas-Westwood (DW) forecasts $58.3 billion of expenditure on floating LNG (FLNG) over the next seven years.
It attributes 61% of this spend to liquefaction infrastructure, with the remainder assigned to import and regasification facilities.
Report author Ben Wilby said: “The success of these first pioneering projects will no doubt impact future commitments by operators to FLNG developments.
“There are now many projects on the starting blocks awaiting a final investment decision by the operator. In 2015 we expect something of a pause in new commitments given both the ‘first in the line to be second’ approach to the technology and the capex cutbacks we have seen as a function of lower oil and gas prices.”
Compared with the onshore alternative,FLNG facilities are more secure and can be developed more quickly, the report points out. In addition, they remove the need for a long pipeline to shore and offer a potentially lower-cost alternative for stranded gas fields.
Report editor Steve Robertson added: “We are likely to see a dip in industry expenditure in 2018 as the first installations are completed and then a second wave of projects move into execution near the end of the decade which will then drive spend to new heights. These yet-to-be-sanctioned projects are targeting stranded gas assets in Australasia, Asia, Gulf of Guinea, East Africa, and the East Mediterranean.
“We also expect morefloating regasification units to be sanctioned, with Asia and Latin America being the dominant regions. Upcoming projects are visible in Indonesia, China, Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, mostly led by national oil companies.
“Latin America will see deployments of floating regas units in Chile and Puerto Rico.”
07/31/2015
