Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Feb. 28 -- Liquid Niugini Gas, the joint venture of Canada's InterOil, broker Merrill Lynch, and finance company Clarion Finance, has selected Bechtel Corp. to carry out front-end engineering and design and engineering, procurement, and construction work for its proposed LNG project in Papua New Guinea.
The JV has also chosen ConocoPhillips's optimized cascade process technology for the plant design.
The liquefaction plant, to be built near InterOil's Napa Napa refinery in Port Moresby, will be capable of producing 5 million tonnes/year of LNG from a single processing train. There is an option to add a second train at a later date.
Gas will be sourced from InterOil's Elk-Antelope field in the eastern highlands, which has current wide-ranging, in situ contingent gas reserves of 3.5-18.9 tcf of gas. InterOil is now focused on drilling a third Elk appraisal along with seismic analysis to better determine the reserves figure.
The JV is pursuing a 2012 schedule for first LNG production, but concedes the timetable is under pressure until the project agreement with Papua New Guinea is finalized.
Merrill Lynch has agreed to take the early production, thus providing Liquid Niugini with a guaranteed market to support financing.