Dear Sirs,
Good morning.
Please note that October is the seasonal health.
Today I prepared two kinds maritime news as follows.
1. The business, which tests and evaluates core facility of drillship by utilizing disposed borehole of the East Sea, is commenced.
Maersk Drilling of Denmark sailed a drillship 'Maersk Venturer', which was recently delivered from Samsung Heavy Industries, out to Block 8 in the East Sea where disposed borehole 'Jujak-1' is located to test and evaluate drilling system of the vessel on September 30.
Maersk Venturer will carry out test and evaluation works for its drilling system at Jujak-1, which is located 1,860m under the sea, for about one month. Jujak-1 is a drywell that no oil has ever been discovered after exploration and drilling works.
The drillship is scheduled to connect and disconnect Blow-Out-Preventer (BOP) to wellhead of Jujak-1 after it gets to sea area of work. The test work is expected to runtill the begining of November.
In the meantime, global drilling companies have transported their deillships which were constructed at countries including Korea to the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, and so on, and then conducted test work for the vessels. A distance between Korean shipyards and the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea is around 28,000km, so it took much time and money to return the vessels back to yards if some technologic problems happened to them. However, Jujak-1 is near to Korean yards, which is expected to save uch money for test and evaluation works.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy of Korea (MOTIE) expects that the business will open up new possibilities for domestic offshore plant industry.
Most of all, by establishing integrated solution including construction of drillship along with test work, it is expeced that capability could be secured, which is differentiated from competing countries like China. In addition, domestic yards, contract competitiveness for offshore plant will be also expected to enhance in future.
MOTIE also plans to carry out escalation of assessment items along with establishment of basement for next-generation drilling system (20,000 psi BOP) evaluation if the test business is successfully implemented. Nowadays, main drillships are 15,000 psi while Jujak-1 is also designed as 15,000 psi.
2. Eterprises involved in joint investment in 'Laviathan' offshore gas field development project have submitted the initial development plan proposal to Israel authorities.
Before the submission, the partner group led by Noble Energy of the US and Delek Group of Israel carried out research on the most optimum development measures for the world's largest gas field over the last few months. The Leviathan offshore gas field lies in about 1,500 of water 130km off the coast of Israel.
It is expected that the project will produce 16bn cbm of natural gas annually. Industry insiders note that actual production process will commence 2018 with initial investment worth $6.5bn.
Particularly, the gas will be produced by utilizing an LNG FPSO and then transported to Israel and so on through subsea pipeline. The partner companies are negotiating with BG Group and Jordan Electric Power Company (JEPCO) regarding the gas supply to a LNG export plant in Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Leviathan FLNG project with annual production capacity of 3m tons has such consortiums engaged for competition as Hyundai Heavy Industries-Technip, Samsung Heavy Industries-Saipem-Chiyoda and so on. Final Investment Decision of the project is expected in late 2015 with FEED contracts (two groups) to be signed late this year.
I hope all is going well for you.
Have a nice week.
Wregards,
Lee Heun-Woo