The Jamaican government has approved an undisclosed shortlist of bidders in its LNG supply tender for Jamaica's long-delayed LNG import terminal project, Christopher Zacca, chairman of the Jamaican LNG Steering Committee, said Thursday.
The government also said it expects project startup to begin by mid-2014, three months later than originally announced. The announcements came after Jamaica's utility regulator last week awarded the Jamaica Public Service Company the right to build a 360 MW combined cycle power plant. The company emerged last April as the sole bidder in that contest.
The government plans to use natural gas from the LNG project to fuel the plant. The power plant is to be built by mid-2014 and is being timed to coincide with the startup of the LNG terminal.
Jamaica's Office of Utilities Regulation took longer than expected to make the power plant award, which in turn created uncertainty about the LNG project and its timetable, according to LNG project officials.
"The fact that the winning bidder has now been named is a huge boost to our project and would move the timeline a little bit, (by) maybe three months," Zacca said.
The government this week approved a shortlist of companies that will be invited to participate in the second round of the tender for LNG supply, he said. Six companies submitted bids: Shell International Trading Middle East; Virginia-based Pace Global; Japan's Marubeni Corporation; U.S.-based Morgan Stanley; Spain's Gas Natural Aprovisionamientos, SDG; and Spain's Repsol Comercializadora de Gas. Zacca declined to say which companies are still in the running or how many are on the shortlist.
"We feel that if the bidders are not fully aware of who they're fighting against that it will increase the competition in the bid," he said, when asked why the companies were not identified. The selected companies will be asked to submit final offers in early April, he said.
Separately, the government also announced that it extended the bid submission deadline in a related tender to provide infrastructure for the project. The new deadline to submit bids is February 24. Previously, it was January 13.
The government made the change after it received four requests this week from companies that wanted extensions in the ongoing tender, Zacca said.
Jamaica plans to start importing LNG in early 2014, with initial demand of 830,000 mt/year (equivalent to 106,000 Mcf/d of gas), mainly from the alumina bauxite and power generation sectors, according to the request for proposal. Demand could reach 1.1 million mt/yr by the fourth quarter of 2016 and about 2.5 million mt/yr by 2025, according to the RFP documents.
