The French oil and gas company TotalEnergies has announced that its Papua LNG joint venture will launch the first phase of front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies for upstream production facilities on the 5.4 Mt/year LNG project in southern Papua New Guinea, near Port Moresby.
In addition, studies for the downstream liquefaction facilities were also progressing in line with the overall project schedule, with an objective of launching the integrated FEED in the fourth quarter of 2022. The project is targeting a final investment decision (FID) around the end of 2023, and a start-up at the end of 2027.
The Papua LNG project is a partnership between Total E&P PNG, who is the project Operator (40.13%), and joint venture partners ExxonMobil PNG (37.03%) and Oil Search (22.84%). It is a 5.4 Mt/year (7.3 bcm/year) export project, consisting of two 2.7 Mt/year (3.65 bcm/year) liquefaction trains that would be developed in synergy with the existing 6.9 Mt/year PNG LNG plant (7.3 bcm/year, commissioned in 2014).