SBM Offshore has completed the US$1.6 billion project financing of the floating production, storage and offloading vessel Sepetiba — the largest project financing in the company’s history.
The Sepetiba FPSO is owned and operated by a special purpose company, in which affiliated companies of SBM hold 64.5% and its partners 35.5%.
The vessel has a processing capacity of up to 180,000 barrels per day of oil, a water injection capacity of 250,000 bpd, associated gas treatment capacity of 12 million cubic metres per day and a minimum storage capacity of 1.4 million barrels of crude.
The FPSO will be spread moored in a water depth of approximately 2000 metres at Petrobras’ Mero field on the Libra block offshore Brazil.
The Mero partners are Shell, TotalEnergies, China National Oil & Gas Exploration & Development Corporation and CNOOC Ltd and the consortium also has the participation of the state-owned company Pre-Sal Petroleo as manager of the production sharing contract, noted SBM.
The project financing was secured by a consortium of 13 international banks with insurance cover from Export Credit Agencies: Nippon Export and Investment Insurance and SACE.
A letter of intent was received from China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure), which intends to join this transaction by the end of the year and will replace a portion of the commercial banks’ commitments.
The facility is composed of four separate tranches with a 4.3% weighted average cost of debt, a 14-year post-completion maturity for the ECA-covered tranches and a 15-year post-completion maturity on the uncovered tranches.
