Eric Watkins
OGJ Oil Diplomacy Editor
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 13 -- Neptune Marine & Drilling Ltd., a subsidiary of Singapore-based Jasper Holdings, said Venezuela's state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) has paid $25.95 million to settle overdue bills in connection with its Mariscal Sucre natural gas project.
The payments cover, among others, all day rate invoices for drilling services provided to PDVSA from Oct. 1 to Dec 18, 2008, Neptune said, adding that it "continues to operate under the drilling contract with PDVSA."
With the payments from PDVSA, Neptune said, "certain breaches in the loan agreement entered into between another subsidiary, Neptune Marine Invests AS and certain banks have also been cured."
Last June, PDVSA took delivery of the drillship Neptune Discoverer under a $785 million contract with Neptune for the drilling of 21 wells at the offshore Mariscal Sucre natural gas project.
Since then, the Mariscal Sucre project has seen several key developments, including a 2,500-sq-km, 3D seismic survey conducted over the block in September by Norway's SCAN Geophysical.
"The first processing steps are very promising and show very good data quality, which will allow PDVSA further to refine its development in this area," PDVSA said of the survey.
Then, in November, Atlantida Socotherm, a subsidiary of Socotherm, was awarded a contract for the concrete weight coating of the 115-km Dragon-Cigma pipeline that will be installed as part of the Mariscal Sucre LNG project.
The project is one of three major developments now being developed by PDVSA, each of which will consist of a separate liquefaction train at the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho (Cigma) natural gas complex in Guiria.
The first train will source gas from the Plataforma Deltana project, with exports estimated at 4.7 million tonnes/year. PDVSA's foreign partners include Galp, Chevron, Qatar Petroleum, Mitsubishi, and Mitsui.
The second train will source natural gas from the Mariscal Sucre project, also exporting an estimated 4.7 million tonnes/year. PDVSA's foreign partners for this project include Galp, Enarsa, Itochu, Mitsubishi, and Mitsui.
The third train will source an as-yet undetermined amount of natural gas from Blanquilla-Tortuga fields. PDVSA's foreign partners include Gazprom, Petronas, Eni, and Energias de Portugal.
According to PDVSA, the total investment in the three LNG projects could reach $20 billion, with first exports expected by 2013.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
