Fortuna LNG, the planned floating LNG project offshore Equatorial Guinea, is "technically ready" for a final investment decision, its operator, UK-listed Ophir Energy, said Thursday.
But obstacles still remain to realizing the project after US oil services giant Schlumberger in April walked away from a preliminary agreement to take a 40% stake.
Only one FID has been taken so far in 2016 on new LNG supply projects -- BP's third train at Tangguh in Indonesia -- and Fortuna LNG had been widely expected to also progress to FID this year.
Despite the Schlumberger setback, Ophir still sees the project as economic, saying it is the "lowest cost greenfield LNG project in the market today." Ophir has also shortlisted four "high quality, high credit-rated" gas off-takers, all of whom are significant players in the LNG market.
It also continues to work with partner Golar LNG on the midstream part of the 2.2 million mt/year project, which is now expected to produce first gas in 2020.
"We have made significant progress in maturing the project and value chain to the point where it is technically ready to FID," Ophir said.
"The upstream portion of the value chain is technically ready to FID and the downstream, offtake portion is ready for a final group decision between the competing offtake offers."
Ophir also said it had reduced estimated upstream costs for the project from $1 billion at the end of 2014 to $450 million.
"On a point forward basis, these represent an upstream development cost of $1.70/boe," it said.
