Yinson completes $800M FPSO refinancing deal

Malaysian FPSO provider Yinson has completed an $800 million refinancing deal for the John Agyekum Kufuor FPSO.

Yinson said via its social media channels on Wednesday that the loan for the FPSO John Agyekum Kufuor was successfully drawn down on 14 April.

The project kicked off five months ago in November 2019 when 13 local and international banks, 7 of which are new to Yinson, signed the refinancing agreement. The tenure of the loan is 12 years.

At the time, Yinson signed the refinancing agreement with the following banks: CIMB Bank, Clifford Capital, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, DBS Bank, Korea Development Bank, Maybank Investment Bank, MUFG Bank, Natixis, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, Societe Generale, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Standard Chartered, and the United Overseas Bank.

The FPSO is a joint venture project, with a 26 per cent stake being held by a Japanese consortium comprising of Sumitomo Corporation, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line), JGC Holdings Corporation, and the Development Bank of Japan. The remaining stake is held by Yinson.

Yinson’s chief strategy officer Daniel Bong said that the deal was able to be completed only because of the close relationships that had been forged between all participating banks, joint venture partners and the client, particularly given the present turbulent environment.

“It was definitely not the most straightforward process, as movement control is being imposed in many countries due to the COVID-19 situation. However, we collectively managed to overcome this hurdle despite all odds”, he said.

As for the FPSO, it is currently operating in OCTP Block, offshore Ghana, chartered by Italy’s Eni. During its lifetime, the field will provide 180 million standard cubic feet per day, enough to convert to gas half of Ghana’s power generation capacity.

The gas is lifted from four deep-water subsea wells connected to the John Agyekum Kufuor FPSO and flows via a dedicated 60-kilometre pipeline to the onshore receiving facility in Sanzule, where gas is compressed and distributed to Ghana’s national grid. Production from the field started in July 2018.