Eni has started liquefied natural gas production from the Coral South floating liquefied natural gas project offshore Mozambique, the operator and partner ExxonMobil independently confirmed in their third quarter results statements, which means start-up was achieved before the of September.
In the third quarter of 2022, hydrocarbon production was supported by start-up of the Coral project in Mozambique, stated Eni.
“As you know, we have produced the first LNG in Coral and we are completing the ramp-up to achieve the first cargo that is forthcoming [sic],” Guido Brusco, Eni’s chief operating officer of natural resources reportedly told the third quarter analysts call.
The first cargo is expected to be loaded soon onto one of the six LNG carriers — British Sponsor, British Mentor, British Partner, British Achiever, British Contributor or British Listener — that UK supermajor BP in 2019 added to its fleet.
These LNG carriers, each with capacity of 173,400 cubic metres of LNG, were built by South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering.
The LNG produced from the Coral South project is being sold by Eni and the other Area 4 concessionaires — ExxonMobil, China National Petroleum Corporation, Galp, Kogas and state-owned ENH — to BP, under a 20-year contract on a Free on Board (FOB) basis with an optional 10-year extension.
Eni in June announced that hydrocarbons had been introduced into the Coral Sul FLNG unit, but there has been no known formal statement regarding the start-up of LNG production.
Moored in a water depth of 2000 metres offshore Mozambique, the Coral Sul FLNG vessel has nameplate liquefaction capacity of 3.4 million tonnes per annum.
The FLNG unit was built in South Korea by consortium of Samsung Heavy Industries, Japan’s JGC and Technip Energies of France under a $2.5 billion contract awarded in 2017.
