The JV, which is operated by Spain's Repsol and contains Australian minnow Pan Pacific Petroleum (5%) with PetroVietnam and Mubadala Petroleum, has started discussions with Malaysia's Yinson Holdings for the floating production, storage and offtake vessel.
Yinson has signed a letter of intent for exclusive negotiations to enable the supply of a new facility in Block 07/03, assuming final terms, conditions and approvals can be achieved.
Repsol is hopeful of coming to terms for the Nam Con Son Basin development in April, to allow the development of the estimated $1.1 billion development and first oil in 2019-2020.
Wood Mackenzie has said that CRD, along with Senex Energy's Western Surat gas project, are the only two greenfields developments in the Asia Pacific region it sees as likely to take FID this year.
Wood Group Kenny has also undertaken front-end engineering and design for the subsea infrastructure and risers.
The final development plan will involve a 20-slot tension leg wellhead platform.
The oil will be sent to the FPSO and the gas into PetroVietnam's proposed NCSP-1 pipeline.
The CRD field is estimated to host around 67 million barrels of oil equivalent, or 3.35MMboe net to Pan Pacific.
First production is planned as early as 2019.
The oil development assumes initial production of 30,000 barrels per day with six production wells and four water injection wells.
Future gas production assumes a plateau production of 50 million cubic feet per day for six years from four producing wells, following ramp up, with additional tail gas sales potential, although there are no pipeline facilities at the moment, and there are no immediate plans for development of the gas phase.
Undrilled near-field prospects at North East CRD and West CRD provide possible upside oil and gas potential and, in the case of success, could be tied back to a CRD development.
Pan Pacific will reduce its equity to 4.25% if PetroVietnam takes up its back-in rights.
