TotalEnergies and Papua LNG partners will postpone a final investment decision to 2025 but said the company and its partners remain committed to the project.
The Papua LNG project is aimed at developing Elk-Antelope gas fields in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Following pre-FEED studies that started in July 2022, the joint venture selected a development concept that includes four electrical LNG trains (e-trains) with total production capacity of 5.6 million tonnes/year (tpy) of LNG. The plan is to bring gas from the fields to the Caution Bay e-trains via a 320-km onshore and offshore pipeline.
News of the delayed FID came through discussions between James Marape, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, and Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive officer of TotalEnergies, during which, Pouyanné shared that after receiving first EPC offers, work must continue “with contractors to obtain commercially viable” contracts, the company said in a release Apr. 8.
The structure of some packages will be reviewed and the competition opened to an enlarged panel of Asian contractors, the company said, but Pouyanné reaffirmed that the company and partners ExxonMobil (37.04%), Santos (22.83%), JX Nippon (2.58%), remain “fully committed” to Papua LNG.
The FID delay will not affect the early works planned in Papua New Guinea in 2024, TotalEnergies said.
The operator also said it intends to drill the first deepwater exploration well on the PPL 576 license in 2025.
