KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 8): Yinson Holdings Bhd said on Tuesday (Feb 8) that the final acceptance of the group's estimated US$5.2 billion (about RM21.7 billion) floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) contracts with Brazil national oil company Petrobras is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2024 (4Q24) and that the FPSO, which will be based offshore Brazil, is expected to commence operations upon achieving final acceptance.

In a statement to Bursa Malaysia, Yinson said its indirect wholly-owned subsidiaries Yinson Production Pte Ltd, Yinson Bergenia Production BV and Yinson Bergenia Serviços de Operação Ltda had on Monday entered into the contracts with Petrobras.

Yinson said the signing of the two contracts, of which one is for the provision of the FPSO while the other involves the operations and maintenance of the FPSO, "is pursuant to the binding letters of intent signed on Nov 12, 2021".

"We refer to our announcement dated Nov 15, 2021 (earlier announcement).

"Pursuant to the contracts, the term of the [FPSO] charter is for a fixed period of 8,218 days or approximately 22.5 years and there is no option to extend the term of the charter thereafter," Yinson said.

In the earlier announcement, Yinson said that following the award of the letters of intent on Nov 12, 2021 by Petrobras to Yinson Production, Yinson Bergenia Production would enter into the FPSO charter contract with Petrobras for the provision of the FPSO while Yinson Bergenia Serviços would enter into the service contract with Petrobras for the provision of operation and maintenance services for the FPSO.

At Bursa's 12:30pm break on Tuesday, Yinson's share price settled down seven sen or 1.22% at RM5.68 to give the company a market capitalisation of about RM6.25 billion.

Yinson's latest-reported number of issued shares stood at 1.1 billion.