US-listed New Fortress Energy expects to deploy five of floating LNG (FLNG) production units at three separate sites in the US and Mexican Gulf.
Hosting an FLNG investor day at the Kiewit Offshore Services shipyard near Corpus Christi, Texas where the company is converting jack-up rigs into FLNG units, New Fortress said its first floater under its Fast LNG brand will be deployed by mid-2023. It had previously said this unit will be in place during the first quarter of next year.
New Fortress said it will put another four units on to their sites by the end of 2024.
In a presentation, the company illustrated that two of these would be deployed off Louisiana in the US and said it is now progressing permitting for these with MARAD and the US Coast Guard.
Another two will form a new FLNG hub off Altamira in Mexico where the company has signed up to a 15-year pipeline gas supply deal with Mexican state electric utility Comision Federal de Electricidad
The company showed a single FLNG unit off Lakach in Mexico where it is engaged in a seven-well development with domestic energy outfit Pemex.
“Our LNG volumes are expected to grow substantially due to Fast LNG,” the company said.
New Fortress said its plans to add over 7 million tonnes per annum of liquefaction capacity to its existing volumes to give it an LNG portfolio of around 9.5 mtpa by the end of 2024.
It said: “The economics of Fast LNG are potentially transformative for our company.”
New Fortress indicated that during 2023 to 2026 it plans to respond to market opportunities to sell FLNG production “primarily to Europe in the near term”.
It also said it will aim to deploy floating storage and regasification units to “create incremental regas capacity in high-margin locations”.
New Fortress revealed it has three FSRUs for deployment, with one falling open each year from 2023 to 2025.
The company detailed that it has nine LNG terminals, 11 LNG carriers which can also serve as floating storage units and eight floating storage and regasification units.
New Fortress told investors and analysts that it is raising its full year 2022 “illustrative adjusted Ebitda goal around $1.1bn from $1bn and for the full 2023 to about $2.5bn plus from over $1.5bn.
In explanation, the company said: “Illustrative economics are targeted values based on specified assumptions rather than management’s view of projected results.”
It said NFE’s illustrative goals are due to portfolio optimisation and higher operating margins in its core business lines, and “— most significantly — the expected on-schedule deployment of our first floating liquefaction unit (“FLNG 1”) in the first half of 2023.”
New Fortress chairman and chief executive Wes Edens said: “Our integrated business is uniquely positioned both to respond to unprecedented near-term market opportunities and to convert our LNG volumes to longer-term contracts to serve downstream energy customers.”
