Page 8 - GLNG Week 32 2021
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GLNG AUSTRALASIA GLNG
Baker Hughes wins subsea contract for Gorgon compression project
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
OILFIELD services provider Baker Hughes announced this week that it had been awarded a contract to supply subsea compression man- ifold technology for the Jansz-Io Compression (J-IC) project at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG plant in Australia.
Baker Hughes said it would provide Chevron with a subsea compression manifold structure (SCMS) including module and foundation. It will also supply the latest optimised version of its horizontal clamp connector system and subsea controls for the manifold structure.
The technology will be supplied under Baker Hughes’ Subsea Connect business, which is aimed at maximising recovery over the entire lifespan of a field, while reducing the total cost of ownership.
The J-IC project involves a modification of the existing Gorgon LNG project. It will help to improve gas recovery from the Janz-Io field, which supplies the liquefaction plant on West- ern Australia’s Barrow Island.
The Janz-Io field has been online since 2015 and is expected to face declining reservoir pres- sure after around 10 years in production. This can be rectified through the addition of com- pression infrastructure.
Chevron said in June that the project would involve the installation of roughly 6,500 tonnes of subsea compression infrastructure, as well as a 27,000-tonne normally unattended floating Field Control Station (FCS). A 135-km subma- rine power cable linked to Barrow Island will also be installed.
The project is estimated to cost roughly $4bn, representing Chevron’s largest capital invest- ment in Australia since the approval of Gorgon Stage 2 in 2018. The project is expected to help
keep the three-train 15.6mn tonne per year (tpy) Gorgon LNG plant filled for decades.
Gorgon Stage 2 is now nearing completion of the installation phase, and will see the Gorgon plant supplied from four new Jansz-Io and seven new Gorgon wells.
The J-IC project is anticipated to take around five years to complete.
Gorgon woes
The project follows a string of challenges for Chevron and its partners in Gorgon. Over the past year, each of Gorgon’s three trains has been taken offline in turn for repairs after weld quality issues were discovered on propane heat exchang- ers – or kettles. Chevron said in mid-June that Train 3 was due to re-enter service in the subse- quent weeks.
Separately, Chevron has come under fire for
missing carbon capture and storage (CCS) tar- come under
gets at Gorgon. The giant LNG project had been
approved on the condition that 100mn tonnes of
its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would be
captured and stored. However, technical chal-
lenges delayed the start-up of the CCS facility
at Gorgon by three years, and to date, Chevron
has only captured 5mn tonnes of carbon dioxide targets at Gorgon. equivalent (CO2e) since the facility came online
in 2019.
Chevron has said it is confident that it could
resolve the problems with the $3.1bn facility’s pressure management system. However, the project is widely viewed as a test case for large- scale CCS technology to accompany oil and gas megaprojects, and its struggles thus far could intensify opposition to relying on carbon cap- ture in order to allow oil and gas production to continue over the long term.
Separately,
Chevron has
fire for missing
carbon capture and storage (CCS)
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 32 13•August•2021
