South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries said Thursday it had received an order for an offshore production facility from "an Asian shipowner." According to reports, the client is Petronas, and the order is for an FLNG unit.
The contract amount is KRW 1.9611 trillion (about $1.5 billion), 29.6% of sales in 2021, and the facility will be delivered by August 2027, Samsung said Thursday.
A Samsung official said the contract was the first offshore production facility deal signed by SHI in three years after Indian Reliance's RUBY FPSO order in 2019.
According to the South Korean news website Pulse, Samsung Heavy Industries has so far in 2022 secured $9.4 billion worth of orders for 49 vessels.
While Samsung Heavy Industries did not say who the client was, industry publications, such as TradeWinds, have reported that the order came from Malaysia's Petronas.
This would be the third FLNG unit operated by Petronas after the PFLNG SATU and PFLNG DUA units, located at the Kebabangan and Rotan offshore gas fields, respectively.
Back in December 2021, Petronas awarded two Front End Engineering Design (FEED) contracts to a JGC Corporation-Samsung Heavy Industries consortium and to Saipem as part of an international dual FEED design competition for a nearshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Sabah.
The project, with a minimum capacity of 2.0 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) is a first of its kind in Malaysia, Petronas said at the time.
"The FEED design competition is expected to take place over the course of 10 months with the Final Investment Decision (FID) planned for end of 2022," Petronas said in December 2021.
"The design and construction of the nearshore plant is expected to be simpler and upon completion, has the potential for improved production uptime as it will be located within a protected bay area as compared to an offshore floating LNG facility in the open seas," the Malaysian oil and gas firm said last year, adding that upon completion, the nearshore LNG unit would increase Petronas’ LNG production from floating LNG facilities from 2.7 MTPA to 4.7 MTPA.