Wison to build FLRSU for Pacific Rubiales

China’s Wison has scooped a contract to build a floating LNG liquefication, regasification and storage (FLRSU) unit to serve Pacific Rubiales off Colombia.

The Shanghai-headquartered engineering firm’s offshore and marine arm has been awarded an engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning contract from Belgium’s Exmar.

The Antwerp-based shipping group will use the FLSRU under a build, own and operate contract with Pacific Rubiales on the Caribbean coast offshore Colombia.

Exmar chief executive Nicolas Saverys said the deal was a “historic event.. for the LNG industry, as the world’s first floating liquefaction unit moves from concept development into a firm turnkey contract”.

Wison Offshore & Marine will design and engineer the unit in Shanghai before building it at the company’s Nantong yard with support from Houston.

Black & Veatch has been contracted for the engineering and procurement of the topside liquefaction equipment and packages, as well as on-site commissioning and start-up services.

Commercial operations are due to start in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The FLRSU consists of a non-propelled barge equipped to convert 69.5 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG), or around 500,000 tonnes of LNG per year.

The LNG will be stored in on-board tanks with a total capacity of 14,000 cubic metres before being offloaded either to tanker or to a permanently-moored floating storage unit.

The facility will be moored to a jetty and supplied by pipeline from the onshore La Creciente field, located in the Lower Magdalena Valley Basin.

Canada's Pacific Rubiales has said it plans to sell half the generated LNG to the local market and export the other half to other countries in the region.

                                                                                                                                   (By Bill Lehane )

Media Link: http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article1248644.ece