BP Approves Major Cross-Border LNG Project Offshore Africa

Supermajor BP and partners announced on Friday the final investment decision for the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim liquefied natural gas (LNG) project offshore Senegal and Mauritania in West Africa.

The ultra-deep development, Africa’s deepest, received final investment decision after the governments of Senegal and Mauritania and the partners in the project—BP, Kosmos Energy, and the two countries’ national oil companies Petrosen and SMHPM—agreed on the production sharing terms.

The Greater Tortue Ahmeyim project will produce gas from an ultra-deepwater subsea system and mid-water floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, BP said. The gas will then be transferred to a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility at a nearshore hub on the Mauritania and Senegal maritime border. The FLNG facility is designed to provide around 2.5 million tons of LNG per year on average, with the total gas resources in the field estimated to be around 15 trillion cubic feet.  

The potential to unlock that amount of gas equals to around twice Africa’s entire 2017 gas production, BP said, noting that the project’s location is ideally placed for exports to markets in Europe, South America, and Asia.

Project execution activities are planned to start as early as in the first quarter of 2019, with first gas expected in 2022.  

BP is the second European oil and gas major to have given the green light to a major LNG project in the past two months, after Shell announced the final investment decision for Canada’s first LNG export project in October. LNG Canada is a joint venture among Shell, Malaysia’s Petronas, PetroChina, Japan’s Mitsubishi, and Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS). Shell, which has the largest stake in the venture—40 percent, says that first LNG from the Canadian project is expected before the middle of the next decade.

U.S. supermajor Exxon, however, has effectively shelved its WCC LNG project in Canada after withdrawing it from an environmental impact review in British Columbia.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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