Ophir has given a twelve-month extension to the Equatorial Guinea’s Block R licence, in which the Fortuna FLNG project is situated, to the end of December 2018 as it needs more time to secure project funding ahead of making a final investment decision (FID) on the project.
The London-based company said that it, together with its partners in the Fortuna FLNG, has been pursuing the project’s financing discussions with a group of Chinese banks and this process has been taking longer than expected.
“Concurrently, Ophir and its partners [OneLNG (Golar 51%, Schlumberger 49%) and GEPetrol] have therefore also been developing alternative funding sources for the project. These alternative options are now at an advanced stage. Ophir expects to be in a positon to select one of these options and to finalise the financing arrangements for the project by mid-December 2017.”
Ophir has added that once the financing arrangements have been selected, it will promptly seek approval for the project from its shareholders and the project stakeholders. “The Final Investment Decision, based on this sequence of approvals, would be expected to take place during Q1 2018.”

Backgrounds:

On 12-Jul-2017, Ophir confirmed that it has delayed taking a FID on the Fortuna FLNG project to the second half of this year as outstanding project milestones include the award of LNG offtake agreements and finalising the project debt facility. “Given that the remaining milestones are dependent on multiple stakeholders, it has proven difficult to precisely forecast FID timing.”
Offtakers for the LNG produced at Fortuna have been shortlisted and project stakeholders are finalising which Brent crude-linked bid to accept, Ophir said. Commercial terms for the debt facility have been agreed with a consortium of three China-based banks and documentation is in the process of being completed.

Updates:

On 7-Mar-2018, Ophir Energy revealed that it expects LNG production at its Fortuna LNG project to start in 2022, instead of 2020 as previously anticipated, because securing funding for the project has taken longer than expected.
It previously expected to have secured financing early this year before taking a FID. However, Ophir Energy still aims to reach the FID in 2018 which has been delayed multiple times from a decision originally planned for 2016.
On 13-Sep-2018, Ophir Energy revealed that it has written down the value of its Fortuna FLNG project by $310 million. “Given the uncertainty around the value we can ultimately realise from Fortuna, we have impaired the asset to a carrying value of $300 million held on our balance sheet at the period-end.” Related Stories:

Ophir: Fortuna LNG technically ready for FID