Keppel Offshore & Marine eyes FLNG as new core business

With a long established record in the offshore conversion market Keppel inked the world’s first FLNG conversion at the end of June worth $735m with Golar LNG, with options for two more.

“We are quite bullish about that [FLNG] it is going to be one of the core businesses going forward,” said YY Chow, ceo of Keppel Offshore & Marine, at parent Keppel Corp’s half year results briefing.

Loh Chin Hua, ceo of Keppel Corp, noted the FLNG sector was expected to attract $65bn investments by 2020. “Asia-Pacific, in particular, is expected to draw a majority of investments in the FLNG sector with its sizeable line-up of regasification and liquefaction projects,” he said.

Keppel is eyeing a slice of this investment with similar type projects to the one they are carrying out for Golar LNG.

“As the FLNG market expands, we see opportunities for Keppel to offer safe, reliable and cost-effective solutions catering to the small and mid-sized LNG segments. Keppel Offshore & Marine Technology Centre has developed its own solutions for LNG liquefaction and transfer to facilitate the production of stranded or associated gas at remote offshore locations,” Loh said. He declined to give figures of the size of business that Keppel is targeting.

Keppel is looking to build on its longstanding record in the offshore conversion market where it has carried out over 100 jobs.

“This [FLNG] is very well suited to our facilities. A lot are converted LNG vessels… very similar to our FPSO business,” Chow explained.

Looking at the groundbreaking project for Golar LNG he was confident on the budget for the project. “Our confidence level on Golar LNG – we have a high degree of confidence on the budget.”