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Ivanhoe Energy and SBM Offshore sign alliance

3/20/2013 9:37:30 AM | Stockhouse Editorial

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The alliance represents another significant step to commercialize Ivanhoe’s heavy oil upgrading process.

Ivanhoe Energy Inc. (TSX: T.IE, Stock Forum) and SBM Offshore (OTO: SBFFF, Stock Forum) are pleased to announce they have formed a global strategic alliance, combining their respective expertise to create floating, production, upgrading, storage and offloading vessels (FPUSO's).

According to the Ivanhoe Energy press release, the two companies have combined their respective technologies and experience to produce a first of its kind design for offshore facilities that will economically produce and upgrade heavy oil from offshore fields with crude oil quality down to 10^°API gravity, or lower.

Ivanhoe's Heavy-to-Light (HTL) process is a partial upgrading technology that drastically reduces the viscosity of stranded heavy oil resources and produces a high quality synthetic crude oil that commands greater value from refineries around the world.

HTL's small footprint and modularization capability makes installation on FPSOs possible.

Moreover, by providing a source of lighter oil on the FPUSO, some of this fluid can be re-circulated back to the subsea wells, providing a robust solution to overcome the flow assurance challenges of subsea heavy oil wells.

Ivanhoe is an independent international heavy oil exploration and development company.

On Wednesday, Ivanhoe was trading at $0.63 a share. The company had a market cap of $217 million, based on 344.5 million shares outstanding. The 52-week high and low was $1.15 and $0.405 respectively.

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