Oct 3 2009
ATP Oil & Gas Corporation (NASDAQ: ATPG) today announced that it has amended its agreement with COSCO Nantong Shipyard Ltd. (“COSCO”) to defer $99 million in construction cost for the Octabuoy hull.
The deferral will be supported by a Letter of Insurance issued by the China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation (“SINOSURE”) to the benefit of COSCO. The Octabuoy, including the hull, topsides and related equipment, will serve as the floating production and drilling facility at ATP’s Cheviot field (Blocks 2/10b, 2/15a and 3/1) in the U.K. North Sea. ATP has a 100% working interest in the Cheviot field and is the operator.
Leland E. Tate, ATP’s President stated, “This transaction with SINOSURE and COSCO advances construction of the Octabuoy hull on pace for a 2011 delivery and facilitates ATP’s objective to achieve first oil at Cheviot in 2012.” Spokesman of COSCO Shipyard Group stated, “We are pleased to be able to support ATP in this project through our strong partnership with SINOSURE. Now we look forward to work closely with ATP to complete the whole project on time and within budget.”
The Octabuoy, designed by Moss Maritime, is a state-of-the-art semi-submersible dry-tree-completion production processing unit designed for oil storage in the columns. The specially shaped hull provides more favorable motion characteristics when compared to conventional semi-submersibles. The hull contract was announced in April 2009 and is currently 65% complete.
With a production/processing capacity of 25 MBbls/d and 50MMcf/d, an ability to work in water depths from 500 to 9500 feet, and a useful life of approximately 50 years, the Octabuoy will be readily relocatable to other fields around the world after it has fully produced the Cheviot reserves.
Source: http://www.atpog.com/