The Sri Lankan government has yet again delayed the deadline for submitting bids to supply the country’s first liquefied natural gas floating storage and regasification unit, writes Amanda Battersby.

The Ministry of Power, Energy & Business Development has set a new date of 23 July for counter-proposals under the Swiss Challenge procedure for the FSRU, related pipeline infrastructure and to supply regasified volumes to the Ceylon Electricity Board.

This is at least the fifth time that the ministry has pushed back the bid submission deadline since the tender was launched in 2018.

The international tender was launched as a Swiss Challenge — which requires a public authority to invite third parties to match or better an unsolicited bid — after South Korean contractor SK E&S submitted an unsolicited proposal to supply a converted FSRU.

The Sri Lankan government subsequently approached the market for a newbuild unit to be deployed about nine kilometres off Colombo.

Regasified volumes would be sent through two subsea pipelines to power plants at Kelanitissa and Kerawalapitiya.

The ministry envisages initial LNG demand of 600,000 tonnes per annum, increasing to 1 million tpa.

However, the tender specifications call for Sri Lanka's maiden FSRU to be able to offer peak capacity of 2 million tpa.

Under Swiss challenge guidelines, original proponent SK would be given the option to match the best rival bid providing that any such bids are ultimately forthcoming.

If SK were to be unable or unwilling to match that bid, the contract winner would have to directly reimburse the South Korean company its $10 million development costs.

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