TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese oil and gas explorer Inpex Corp said on Wednesday it has awarded additional contracts for early-stage design work on its $20 billion Abadi liquefied natural gas project in Indonesia’s Masela block.
In April, the firm launched a front-end engineering design (FEED) process to assess technical details and costs to build the facilities needed to extract and process natural gas from the Abadi gas field and convert it to LNG at an onshore plant.
Following its announcement of some initial awards on Monday, Inpex said that two contractor consortiums – one led by Japan’s JGC Holdings and the other by U.S. engineering firm KBR – have been selected to conduct FEED work for the onshore LNG facility.
The two groups will work in parallel under a so-called “dual FEED” framework to foster competition.
The consortium that provides the better technical and commercial proposal will be awarded the subsequent Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract, Inpex said.
The FEED scope also includes work related to carbon capture and storage (CCS), it said.
The move signals progress toward a final investment decision on the project, which is expected to produce at its peak 9.5 million metric tons of LNG a year.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Sonia Cheema)
