Feedback from oilfield services contractors is helping Japanese operator Inpex to clarify its strategy for the front-end engineering and design phase of the Abadi liquefied natural gas project in Indonesia, writes Russell Searancke.

Inpex has been accumulating information in the past month via market surveys with companies that are expected to be contenders for the FEED phase and the subsequent engineering procurement and construction stage.

It had been thought that Inpex might favour design competitions for some of the massive production facilities, paving the way for selected contractors to perform the hugely-lucrative engineering procurement and construction contracts.

However, sources said that Inpex is now showing a preference for running separate competitions for four FEED contracts, although this strategy has not been finalised.

The four production facilities for Abadi will be a large floating production, storage and offloading vessel, an onshore LNG facility, an offshore gas export pipeline, and the subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines.

Sources said the invitations to tender for FEED should be coming soon.

Pre-FEED work was carried out last year by KBR on the LNG plant, by TechnipFMC on the FPSO, and by Chiyoda with Synergy Engineering for the SURF and gas export pipeline.

The LNG facilities will be designed to produce 9.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG.

The leased Abadi FPSO is envisaged as being able to handle 1.8 billion cubic feet per day of gas and have the capacity to process 36,000 barrels per day of condensate.

The project recently gathered momentum after the Indonesian regulator approved the revised plan of development.

Inpex said in response that it aims to make the project competitive “and will continue to work toward the production start-up scheduled in the latter half of the 2020s”. It added that the immediate plan was to work closely with joint venture partner Shell to get ready for the FEED phase.

The operator intends to bring all of the lessons of its Ichthys LNG project in Australia to bear on Abadi.

Takayuki Ueda, Inpex's chief executive, said recently: "While the project’s development concept has been changed from a floating LNG scheme to an onshore LNG scheme, I am confident that the economics of the project based on the revised POD are now sufficiently strong for Inpex and Shell, given the PSC term until 2055 and sufficient financial conditions have been secured following a series of constructive discussions with the authorities."