Bumi Armada gets LOI for RM9.5b Angola deal

KUALA LUMPUR: Offshore oil services firm Bumi Armada Bhd has received a letter of intent from eni Angola S.p.A for a RM9.5 billion contract for the chartering, operation and maintenance of a floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO).

In a statement today, Bumi Armada said the FPSO contract is for deployment at Block 15/06, East Hub located offshore Angola and will be awarded to a

consortium of Bumi Armada Offshore Holdings Ltd (BAOHL) and Angoil Bumi JV Limitada.

eni Angola is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italian multinational oil and gas company eni S.p.A, while BAOHL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bumi Armada and

Angoil Bumi JV is the Angolan joint venture company between BAOHL, Angoil Exploracao Petrolifera S.A. and Cosmarg Limitada.

"The letter of intent has authorised Bumi Armada to start engineering and procurement work on the FPSO immediately," it said.

Its chief executive officer and executive director Hassan Basma said the contract is their second large FPSO award in six months and underscores their

successful migration into the large-project FPSO sector.

"This is the second time eni has turned to Bumi Armada for an FPSO in West Africa and we will continue to collaborate with our tried and tested value chain, as we have done in the past, to successfully deliver this project for our repeat customer," he said.

Hassan said this project is the company's first very large crude carrier (VLCC)-tanker conversion and it would take Bumi Armada's FPSO fleet to eight, clearly moving them into the top tier of global FPSO players