BACKGROUND
Merlin Associates is a process engineering consulting company with extensive experience in the gas production and LNG industries. We have been in business since June 1985. Approximately 45% of our work effort is as third party technical advisors to commercial banks and multilateral funding agencies providing project financing to LNG and gas production projects. The remaining 55% is to the major international energy companies, state energy companies, and larger independent energy companies providing consulting services in support of pre-feasibility, feasibility, and conceptual studies evaluating participation in large gas production, pipeline, natural gas liquefaction and re-gasification projects, and independent power production projects.

We provide consulting services to our clients from the wellhead to the burner-tip/buss bar covering all aspects of design engineering, cost estimating, project management, scheduling, and construction monitoring for these projects. LNG chain projects are often broken into the segments of production, liquefaction, shipping, import terminal, and end-user (power generation and/or gas distribution). We have extensive detailed experience in all these segments. Merlin Associates has proprietary cost estimating models that provide high accuracy capital and operating cost estimates for each of these segments.

Merlin Associates are specialists in consulting engineering for offshore production facilities and pipelines, on-shore gas processing plants of various types, and project risk analysis for feasibility and conceptual design evaluation. Our personnel have worked as major participants on offshore production projects in Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, U.K. and Norwegian North Sea, Arabian Gulf, Australia, and the Gulf of Mexico. We teach courses in offshore facility design, LNG technology, and project risk analysis. Our services are entirely computer based working primarily from our U.S. offices for world wide locations.

In addition to pure consulting engineering, we offer technical education in several areas. We have developed and taught an LNG Technology course at several client locations and the Topsides Facilities Design Module for the Tension Leg Platform Design course sponsored by the ASME Offshore Mechanics & Arctic Engineering Division as part of the Offshore Technology Conference held annually in Houston. We have an intensive 10 day Offshore Process Facility Design Course that we have taught in numerous locations world wide.

Merlin Associates has participated in numerous projects supporting project financing by commercial and multilateral financing agencies. Many of these assignments have included all the segments of the LNG chain while some have involved only a single segment such as the liquefaction facilities.

With this broad experience resource Merlin Associates is capable of providing technical consulting services across the full spectrum of energy production, transmission, and end-user industries. This is demonstrated by the variety of projects listed in our personnel resumes.