The mooring system at the Oil Search operated Papua New Guinea production facility was reported to be damaged, causing loading and production disruptions, the company said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange Wednesday.
"As a precautionary measure, Oil Search temporarily suspended scheduled liquids loading last week. In addition, to extend the liquids storage available in the liquids export system, the company curtailed production from the Oil Search-operated oil fields and the PNG LNG operator partially reduced PNG LNG production," Oil Search said in the statement.
The company added that due to adverse weather and sea conditions in the Gulf of Papua, the inspection of the mooring system could not be carried out yet.
Oil search said that they developed a temporary solution for safe berthing and loading of vessels at the facility, which enabled liquids loading to resume at a reduced rate from August 25.
LNG Vessel Kumul is currently anchored at Port Moresby since August 26, waiting to load a cargo from the PNG LNG facility, cFlow, Platts trade flow software showed.
No ships left the port between August 18 to August 25, the data showed. The last LNG vessel to load a cargo and sail from Port Moresby was Maran Gas Leto, which entered the port on August 23 and sailed on August 25, according to Platts cFlow.
Oil search said that they were working closely with the PNG plant operators to ramp up LNG production back to normal. However, they added that it was currently unclear whether it would be necessary to adjust their 2019 production estimate, due to the damaged mooring system and the resultant loading issues.
PNG's LNG facility has an annual nameplate capacity of 6.6 million mt of LNG, according S&P Global Platts Analytics.
