KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 21): Yinson Holdings Bhd’s African joint venture entity has received a letter of intent (LOI) from Aker Energy Ghana Ltd for the provision of a floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) for the Pecan development project at the deepwater Tano/Cape Three Points are offshore Ghana.

In a bourse filing today, Yinson said Aker Energy had issued the LOI to Yinson Production West Africa Ltd, Yinson Gazania Production Ltd (YGPL) and Yinson Gazania Operations Ltd (YGOL) for a bareboat charter party agreement as well as an operation and maintenance agreement.

Yinson said the LOI had been accepted by Yinson West Africa, YGPL and YGOL on Feb 20.

The company said the primary term of the contracts is for a period of 10 years, and that Aker Energy may extend it for an additional one year, up to five times, for a maximum of 15 years or as other agreed by the parties.

Yinson said Aker Energy owns 50% of the rights to the Tano/Cape Three Points field with the remainder being held by Lukoil Overseas Ghana Tano Ltd (38%), Ghana National Petroleum Corp (10%) and Fueltrade Ltd (2%).

The firm said the Pecan field is located in ultra-deep waters, ranging from 2,400 to 2,700 metres deep, 115 kilometres offshore Ghana. The field will produce through Yinson’s FPSO, which will be the centre for processing and exporting of crude oil from the field, with a plateau production of approximately 110,000 barrels of oil per day.

This FPSO will be Yinson’s second vessel to operate in Ghanaian waters, with the first being FPSO John Agyekum Kufuor, which has been operating for ENI in the Offshore Cape Three Points Block since 2017.

Yinson group chief executive officer (CEO) Lim Chern Yuan said this was the group’s second large project award in the last six months.

“We are gearing up for even greater growth ahead. In line with this, we have been building our resources, capacity and expertise; putting us in a strong position to meet our commitments to the projects that we have undertaken,” he said.

Meanwhile, Yinson CEO for production, Eirik Barclay added that the Yinson team is greatly looking forward to working with Aker Energy on this exciting and challenging project in over 2,400 metres of water depth.

“We are confident in our ability to deliver the FPSO to the Pecan field on schedule," said Barclay.

Yinson said the contracts are expected to contribute positively to its earnings.

Trading in Yinson has been halted from 9am today and will resume at 10am. The stock was last traded at RM7.24 for a market capitalisation of RM7.93 billion.