Ivanhoe Energy, Inc. (IVAN) Strategic Global Alliance with SBM Offshore to Produce Ultimate Offshore Heavy Oil Production/Upgrading Solution
Ivanhoe Energy dropped some big news today as the announcement was made of a global strategic alliance with one of the modern masters of offshore production logistics, SBM offshore. It is a marriage of technical expertise designed to fully exploit the largely untapped offshore heavy oil assets around the world via the creation of so-called FPUSO craft (floating, production, upgrading, storage, and offloading). Brilliant strategic play by IVAN here, whose proprietary HTL (Heavy-to-Light) oil upgrading process, which renders out a high-value synthetic crude with massively improved viscosity, makes exploitation of heavy oil a localizable, economic operation, requiring only a relatively…