A pair of Chinese fabrication yards have emerged as the front runners to provide the bulk of the modules needed to build two liquefied natural gas trains for the Shell-led LNG Canada project in British Columbia.

Among the six bidders to supply more than 200,000 tonnes of modules for the C$40 billion (US$31.2 billion) LNG project, the facilities of Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC) and its joint venture partner Fluor - COOEC-Fluor Heavy Industry - in China’s Zhuhai city are leading the race for the process modules, sources familiar with the tender process said.

Two other Chinese yards, Penglai Jutal Offshore Engineering and Bomesc Offshore Engineering, will likely provide some utility modules and those for electric power, they added.

The lead contractor, the US-Japanese Fluor-JGC consortium, will make awards in the first quarter next year.

Construction is scheduled to start a year later, given that the yards will take most of 2019 to do engineering for the fabrication work.

Sources said that in the latest part of its yard qualification process, Fluor-JGC only included COOEC’s yard in Qingdao, Bomesc in Tianjin, COOEC-Fluor Heavy Industry in Zhuhai and Penglai Jutal in Yantai.

JGC already has an agreement in place with COOEC to co-operate on projects requiring the construction of oil and gas modules. That five-year pact runs from this year through to 2023 and targets oil, gas and chemicals plants, as well as floating production, storage and offloading vessels and floating LNG vessels.

The modules, which are classified in three packages covering processing, pipe rack, and electrics and utilities, plus one inlet facilities integrated module, will carry a total weight up to 240,000 tonnes for two large liquefaction trains with combined capacity of 14 million tonnes per annum.

There will be up to 18 process modules weighing 100,000 tonnes and 12 pipe rack modules weighing 40,000 tonnes.

Deliveries are scheduled to start in May 2020 and run through to the end of 2021. The Fluor-JGC consortium was awarded the main EPC contract for LNG Canada by Shell in April this year, with the Japanese player expected to be largely responsible for engineering the process modules and its US partner handling engineering for the other modules, sources said.

Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell operates LNG Canada with a 40% stake and is partnered by Malaysia's Petronas on 25%, PetroChina and Japan's Mitsubishi each on 15% and South Korea's Kogas on 5%.

Each of the joint venture partners will be responsible for providing their own natural gas supply and will individually offtake and market their own LNG.

Weekly

Chinese yards lead race for LNG Canada contract