The consortia include McDermott Marine Construction and GE Oil & Gas UK, and Subsea 7 and Aker Solutions.
Ophir will select one of the consortia through a competitive process, which involves submission of tenders for subsea development design.
Ophir CEO Nick Cooper said: "The award of upstream front end engineering and design (FEED) is an important milestone as we continue to de-risk the Fortuna FLNG Project through the ‘define’ phase."
Upon completion of the FEED process at the end of 1Q 2016, the company is expected to make a final investment decision (FID) in mid-2016 with plans to commence gas production in mid-2019.
"Ophir’s focus will now switch to securing buyers for the LNG offtake and to bringing in an equity partner prior to our mid 2016 FID," Cooper added.
Ophir, which already contracted the first FLNG vessel in May with midstream partner Golar LNG, is considering contracting a second FLNG vessel.
"The selection of FLNG to monetize our Block R resource base has drastically reduced gross development capex to first gas from the $3bn estimates for a conventional LNG plant to $800m for FLNG, and has also reduced development lead time; thereby accelerating first gas by 2-3 years to 2019.
"These improvements significantly enhance the project’s upstream internal rate of return (IRR)," Cooper added.
Fortuna is the first phase of the planned four-phased development of the fields discovered in Block R, which is 80% owned by Ophir Energy while the remaining is held by GEPetrol.
