First well to be drilled next year

TOTALENERGIES chairman and chief executive officer Patrick Pouyanné says that the company intends to drill the first deepwater exploration well on the Petroleum Prospecting Licensee 576 next year for the Papua LNG project.
Pouyanné met with Prime Minister James Marape in Singapore over the weekend for discussions on the status of the Papua LNG.
Pouyanné reaffirmed to the Prime Minister that TotalEnergies, operator of the project, and its international partners ExxonMobil, Santos, JX Nippon, were fully committed to Papua LNG.
In particular, he shared the high interest of several LNG buyers for off-taking LNG from Papua LNG due to its strategic location close to key Asian markets.
He also informed the Prime Minister that, after receiving first EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) offers, it appears that the project will need to keep working with contractors to obtain commercially viable EPC contracts and requires more work to reach the Final Investment Decision (FID).
In that view, the project will review the structure of some packages and open the competition to an enlarged panel of Asian contractors. As a consequence, FID of Papua LNG project is now expected in 2025.
Marape and Pouyanné agreed that this slight delay would not affect the early works planned in PNG this year and that the project would maintain its full support to local population of Gulf.
This demonstrates the commitment of TotalEnergies to the well-being of the people of PNG.