(Business in Cameroon) - Golar Maria, a 146,000 m 3 vessel built in 2006 will accost at Kribi deepwater port on May 26, 2018. Chartered by the Russian company Gazprom Marketing & Trading (GM & T), which will buy the whole liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced at Kribi offshore during the next 8 years, the vessel will load the second cargo of LNG produced by the floating LNG unit Hilli Episeyo
According to the British online news website, TradeWinds, the first cargo has been loaded between April 30, and May 1, 2018, onboard the Galicia Spirit, a 138,000 m3 vessel built in 2004. However, our sources reveal that during that operation, the vessel only loaded part of the LNG and came back recently to load the remaining.
Another revelation by authorized sources indicates that, the first-ever LNG load to come from Cameroon, whose export had been reported last month (for administrative reasons according to official sources), should be delivered, in the coming days, to Petrochina which signed an agreement with Gazprom Marketing & Trading.
Therefore, China which has been the main investor in Cameroon since 2013 is about to become the first buyer for the first ever load of LNG produced in Cameroon.
For the record, the LNG is produced by a floating LNG unit baptized Hilli Episeyo (the second floating LNG unit in the world after the one launched last year in Malaysia by the Brazilian oil and gas company Petronas).
With a production capacity of 1.2 million tons of LNG yearly, the floating unit which belongs to Golar LNG will help Cameroon produce natural gas while awaiting the construction of a land unit not far from Kribi deepwater port by SNH and Perenco. An investment of about CFA700 billion, Hilli Episeyo will also produce about 30,000 tons of domestic gas yearly and 5,000 barrels of condensate daily.
Brice R. Mbodiam