UK-based Energean PLC said May 24 that first gas from its flagship Karish offshore field in Israel is now expected in mid 2022 after new COVID-19 restrictions were introduced at the Singapore shipyard building its dedicated gas production facility.
Energean in April had already warned that first gas would slip from an end-2021 target to first-quarter 2022 if the workforce were not increased at the shipyard.
"Based on current restrictions in Singapore, the Energean Power FPSO is now expected to sail away from Singapore to Israel in Q1 2022 with first gas in mid-2022," the company said.
"However, Energean and its contractors are focused on optimizing the revised Karish timetable and have identified approximately 30 improvements that are being considered for implementation," it said.
The 8 Bcm/year floating production, storage and offloading vessel was 95.6% complete as of April 30 and remains the "critical path item" to delivering first gas from the Karish development.
"Singapore has recently tightened its legal restrictions, including on movement of people, in response to an increased domestic COVID-19 case load and regional proliferation of new virus variants," Energean said.
The yard was also shut for five days in April following the identification of a COVID-19 case within the workforce.
"Manpower availability is expected to improve in the coming weeks as other projects in the yard approach completion," Energean said.
Its CEO Mathios Rigas said while the revised timetable for Karish was unfortunate, "it should not have a material impact on the 15+ year secured revenue stream of our Israeli gas business."
Production guidance
Energean, which at the end of 2020 closed its acquisition of Italy's Edison E&P, also said it was raising its full-year production guidance for 2021 after a strong first four months of the year.
Production in the four months to end-April averaged 44,200 b/d of oil equivalent, of which 72% was gas.
"Production is ahead of the guidance range across all countries following robust operational performance since the start of the year," it said.
Following this performance, Energean said it had increased its full-year guidance range to 38,000-42,000 boe/d from 36,000-41,000 boe/d previously.
Energean's production was limited to small volumes from Greece before it completed the $203 million acquisition of Edison E&P, which gave it upstream assets in Egypt, Italy, the UK, Croatia and Malta.
