Inpex awards contracts for engineering design of Indonesian LNG Project

Inpex Corp, a Japanese oil and natural gas exploration company, announced on Monday that it had awarded several contracts for the early stages of design work in its $20 billion Abadi project for liquefied gas in Indonesia's Masela Block.

This move indicates that early design is progressing towards the final investment decision. The project is expected to produce 9.5 million tons of LNG per year at its maximum.

The Japanese explorer began the front-end design process in April. He reviewed and defined the technical details, including costs, for the construction of the facilities required to extract, process and convert natural gas from Abadi's gas field into LNG.

Four parts make up the front-end engineering work: an onshore LNG plant; a floating production storage and offloading system; subsea risers, flowlines and umbilicals.

Inpex, according to an official statement, has awarded contracts except for the LNG onshore plant.

Two contractor teams, one led by France’s Technip Energies, and the other by Italy’s Saipem, will work simultaneously but separately on the floating production storage and offloading facilities. This is called a “dual FEED” to maintain a competitive atmosphere.

Inpex stated that a similar approach would be used to determine the final contracts for the LNG plant onshore, and that these will be determined later.

Worley, an Australian engineering and construction firm, has been awarded the contract for the subsea pipelines as well as the risers, umbilicals and flowlines.

A spokesperson for the company said that Inpex is still hoping to make the final investment decision in 2027 and to start production as early as the 2030s.

The Japanese company controls a 65% share in the Abadi Project. Pertamina Indonesia and Petronas Malaysia took over Shell’s 35% stake in the project by 2023. (Reporting and editing by Mrigank Dahniwala; Yuka Obayashi)

(source: Reuters)