Black & Veatch technology and expertise critical to world’s first Floating LNG Liquefaction unit

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Published on Thursday, 12 July 2012 01:00

12 July 2012  – Black & Veatch will provide technology and services for the world’s first Floating LNG Liquefaction, Regasification and Storage Unit called EXMAR EXPORT™.  It will be a non-propelled barge moored to a jetty, supplied with gas by pipeline from the onshore La Creciente field, located in the Lower Magdalena Valley Basin in Colombia.

Once the EXPORT™ has been built, it will be towed from China to Colombia where it will be owned and operated by EXMAR for Pacific Rubiales Energy Corporation. The EXPORT™ will be located off the coast of Colombia. It will begin production at the end of 2014 giving the country greater access to global LNG import and export markets.

Wison Offshore & Marine Ltd will deliver the overall engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning to EXMAR. Headquartered in Shanghai, Wison will construct the facility through its wholly-owned fabrication facility in Nantong, China.  A global Black & Veatch team working from offices in several countries will be supporting Wison on this project.

Rendering above of the EXMAR’s EXPORT™.  The EXPORT™ consists of a non-propelled barge equipped to convert 72 million scf/d of natural gas into LNG (+/- 500,000 tons of LNG per annum) that will be temporarily stored in onboard tanks with a total capacity of 14,000m3 and subsequently offloaded either to a permanently-moored floating storage unit or shuttle tankers.

“The rise of LNG is being driven by a surge in demand for alternative cleaner fuel in China and Japan in particular. The global LNG trade increased by 14 percent in 2011 alone*,” said Dr. Hoe Wai Cheong, Managing Director, Asia and MEIEA regions, Black & Veatch’s global energy business. “What we’re now seeing is a race to provide viable solutions that enable the entire LNG processing value chain to be based offshore closer to production wellheads.  This is a smarter, faster way to gain market access over similar, previously proposed projects and it can be redeployed rapidly to other field locations when required. It will also have a positive effect on the lives of people in the surrounding region, enabling the delivery of a clean, combustible fuel alternative.”

Black & Veatch previously completed the front-end engineering design for EXMAR’s EXPORT™ LNG in 2011. The company has worked with EXMAR since 2008 in an alliance arrangement to develop floating LNG solutions.