(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroon’s National Oil and Gas Corporation (SNH) announces that the floating LNG vessel Hilli Episeyo has launched the first production tests in mid-December 2017. The commercial exploitation is announced to start at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

“The Floating LNG project is a first worldwide which places the SNH and its partners at the heart of innovation in the international gas industry. Cameroon, the pioneer of this major project, in fact joins the restricted group of natural gas exporting countries”, the SNH declared.

The Hilli Episeyo arrived in Cameroon’s waters on November 20, 2017. The vessel which belongs to Golar, manufactured in Norway, left Singapore on October 12, 2107, at the end of the conversion works conducted at Keppel Shipyard.

The floating plant will be supplied in natural gas by the Sanaga and Ebomé gas fields, offshore Kribi. The gas will be extracted from six wells located on the Sanaga field, then it will be processed in Bipaga’s facilities, before being conveyed to the floating unit for effective liquefaction.

The floating unit will help SNH and Perenco, partners of the association Sanaga-Sud, produce 1.2 million tons of LNG per year for export, 30,000 tons of domestic gas for Cameroonian households and 5,000 barrels of condensate every day.

S.A