TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese oil and gas explorer Inpex Corp said on Monday it has awarded a few contracts for early-stage design work for its $20 billion Abadi liquefied natural gas project in the Masela block in Indonesia.
The move shows that the early design process is making progress toward the final investment decision for the project, which is expected to produce at its peak 9.5 million metric tons of LNG a year.
In April, the Japanese explorer started the front-end engineering design process, reviewing and defining the technical details and costs for building the facilities needed to extract and process natural gas from the Abadi gas field and turn it into LNG at an onshore plant.
The front-end engineering design work consists of four parts — the onshore LNG plant, a floating production, storage and offloading facility, subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines, and gas export pipeline.
Inpex has awarded contracts for all but the onshore LNG plant, according to a statement.
For the floating production, storage and offloading facility, two contractor teams — one led by France’s Technip Energies and another led by Italy’s Saipem — will work in parallel but separately in a so-called “dual FEED” to ensure a competitive environment is maintained.
A similar approach will be used for the onshore LNG plant, with final contracts to be decided later, Inpex said.
Australian engineering and construction company Worley has won the contracts for the gas export pipeline and subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines.
Inpex still aims to make a final investment decision to proceed with the project in 2027, and hopes to begin production in the early 2030s, a company spokesperson said.
The Japanese company operates the Abadi project and controls a 65% stake in it. Indonesia’s Pertamina and Malaysia’s Petronas took over Shell’s 35% holding in the project in 2023.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
