Page 10 - MEOG Week 47.pdf

MEOG tenders MEOG
Qatar delays NFE award with progress coming on Al-Shaheen
Qatar
REPORTS emerged last week that qatargas has delayed the submission date for bids for onshore work under the umbrella of its North Field Expansion (NFE) project, while bidding is set to begin for work at the Al-Shaheen oilfield.
Project observers were quoted by Upstrea- monline as saying that bidding for the packages for two “substantial onshore packages compris- ing the liquefaction and storage facilities” would now take place in q1 2020 after missing the October deadline.
Meanwhile, another source said that this delay would push back the submission of bids for NFE’s key engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal until mid-2020.
In July, US-based services firm McDermott was awarded a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract as part of the major project..
The FEED contract covers wellhead plat- forms, pipelines and cables. In a press release, McDermott said that the scope of the work entails the design of four offshore trunklines with intra-field pipelines, eight wellhead plat- forms and power and fibre-optic (PFO) subsea cable rings. The contract is thought to be worth up to $50mn.
The estimated US$20 billion expansion of the North Field has been the focus of external and internal attention on the qatari energy sector since it was launched nearly two years ago.
The scheme is designed to raise upstream output by 1.4mn barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) to 6.2mn boepd and expand LNG pro- duction by 31mn tonnes per year (tpy) to 110mn tpy.
The contracting process on the NFE is well underway, with a tender for the four new LNG trains issued in mid-April. On April 22, qP turned to the transportation process, issuing a tender for potentially in excess of 100 LNG tankers.
The main package, worth several billion dol- lars, covers four 7.8mn-tpy LNG ‘mega-trains’ at the site where 14 trains of varying sizes currently produce just over 77mn tpy.
Japan’s Chiyoda Corp. was selected for the FEED contract in March 2018 and in joint venture (JV) with TechnipFMC, is the strong favourite. Chiyoda and TechnipFMC installed the six previous mega-trains at the complex, completed last decade before the imposition of a 12-year development moratorium at the field.
The contracting process on the NFE is well underway, with a tender for the four new LNG trains issued in mid-April to three EPC JVs: Chi- yoda and TechnipFMC; JGC Corp. and Hyundai
Engineering & Construction; and Saipem, McDermott and CTCI Corp.
The remaining onshore packages covers two berths and infrastructure, chiefly pipelines, tying-in the new components with existing facil- ities at the Ras Laffan complex.
qP CEO Saad al-Kaabi has said on several occasions that all the EPC contracts on the scheme will be let by the end of 2019 under a schedule envisaging completion in 2023.
On April 22, qP turned to the transportation process, issuing a tender for potentially in excess of 100 LNG tankers.
al-shaheen
Industry sources were also quoted last week as saying that bidding is set to kick off for a major contract by qatar’s North Oil Co. (NOC) on the offshore Al-Shaheen oilfield.
Five services firms are believed to be in the running for a contract covering subsea umbili- cals, risers flowlines (SURF) for the asset ahead of a mid-December deadline. The list of bidders is likely to include some of the usual suspects for qatari EPC work including TechnipFMC of the UK and Norway-based Subsea 7, which is the subject of a potential merger with Italy’s Saipem.
Renewed development work has been in progress at Al-Shaheen since the assumption of operatorship by France’s Total in July 2017. The asset produces around 300,000 barrels per day.
Again, qP had failed to reach a mutually-ac- ceptable new agreement with the longstanding incumbent, Denmark’s Maersk Oil. The French firm instead took a 30% stake alongside the qatari parastatal in the newly-created NOC now operating the asset, and pledged investment of $3.5bn over the first five years of the 25-year agreement to maintain and potentially increase output from the complex field.
During q4 2018, NOC awarded an estimated $300mn engineering, procurement, construc- tion and installation (EPCI) contract to new- comer PetroVietnam Technical Services (PVTS) for work on the first phase of a redevelopment project known as Gallaf. Scheduled for com- pletion by the end of 2020, the package encom- passes three wellhead platform and bridges.
Apparently eager to confirm the company’s qualification for the job, the Vietnamese firm on April 1 announced that the first steel had been cut “only around four months from the LoI [let- ter of intent] from North Oil Co.”.
Neither Total nor qP has publicly announced production targets but previous, unsuccessful expansion efforts had aimed at 500,000 bpd.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 47 27•November•2019