Lopez-led FGEN LNG Corporation will conclude by the middle of next month the bid process for its planned chartering of a floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) to serve as its interim facility on targeted importation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) starting year 2022.
Jonathan C. Russell, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of First Gen Corporation, said the binding invitation to tender (BITT) had been served to three prospective bidders: and these are foreign firms BW Gas Limited; GasLog LNG Services Ltd.; and Hoegh LNG Asia Pte. Ltd.
“Bids are due to be submitted by mid-November,” he said, while noting that there had been no minimum price set for the tenderers.
Russell qualified though “it is a competitive tendering process which will take into account contractual, legal and technical factors.”
First Gen said it moved into the official bid process for the FSRU chartering “after satisfactory completion of a non-binding prequalification process,” and after the Lopez firm secured its permit to construct, expand, rehabilitate and modify (PCERM) from the Department of Energy (DOE), so it can prepare its LNG site at its Clean Energy Complex in Batangas.
The timeline of LNG importation is still third quarter of year 2022, as previously laid down by First Gen, and this will “serve the natural gas requirements of existing and future gas-fired power plants of third parties and LNG facilities.”
Russell said the prospective bidders “are all very experienced players in the international LNG industry and we are delighted that they have expressed such keen interest in providing a suitable FSRU for the benefit of the project and the Philippines.”
The First Gen executive explained that the BITT process “is designed to enable FGEN LNG to select the FSRU supplier and FSRU best suited to meet the needs of the project in order to deliver a safe, reliable and competitive supply of LNG to our customers.”
According to the Lopez firm, a typical FSRU has storage capacity of between 125,000 m3 to 170,000 m3. This facility can store LNG and its onboard regasification plant is “capable of returning LNG into gaseous state” which can then be subsequently supplied to a gas network.
Citing data from the World LNG Report of the International Gas Union, First Gen noted that as of 2019, roughly 6.0-percent of global fleet of 541 LNGC vessels are in the configuration of FSRUs.
The company’s gas-fired power plants in Batangas are seen as the initial key market of the FSRU facility; then gas usage could eventually be expanded with other power plants, including new builds and the targeted deployment of smaller-scale gas generating fleets across islands or in off-grid domains of the country.
The longer-term aspiration of the energy department is to also spur gas utilization among industrial users; and for the transport sector to also shift to this cleaner fuel alternative.