Saipem wins Aramco contract
Saipem has been handed a contract for jackets by Saudi Aramco, the Italian EPC firm announced on Monday.
“With this award, Saipem is further reinforcing its presence [in] a highly strategic area such as the Middle East,” CEO Stefano Cao said in a statement.
The contract covers 19 jackets on the Saudi Arabian NOC’s Safaniyah, Marjan, Berri, Hasbah and Zuluf fields. Its exact value was not disclosed, though the firm added in a press release that it had received around USD 500 million of contracts, including work in Angola, West Africa and the Caspian Sea.
The deal was struck under long-term agreements that were renewed by the two companies in 2015 for an additional six years.
Saipem reportedly beat out McDermott International, Dynamic Industries, a partnership between Larson & Toubro and Emas, and Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company for the tender, which was released in January 2017.
First stage of Total facility upgrade comes to a close
Total have begun producing ethylene from natural gas after improvements were made to its Antwerp platform.
As part of a wider upgrade plan, $60 million was invested to refurbish one of the refining and chemicals platform’s two steam crackers.
The money also helped adapt the site’s terminal, making it capable of handling 200,000 tons of ethane imported by ship from Norway.
Bernard Pinatel, president of Total’s refining and chemicals division, said: “The Antwerp project is part of Total’s strategy of upgrading its major integrated platforms and expanding its petrochemicals business to take advantage of low cost feedstock.”
Ethylene production will use ethane feedstock extracted from natural gas, a significantly cheaper method than oil-derived feedstock.
The project is also flexible as it is able to use butane and naphtha as well as ethane feedstock.
Further upgrades to the platform in Antwerp’s port area are expected to be completed in the second half of 2017 and include the construction of a new refining complex and a processing facility for off-gas.
Gazprom lets contract for Amur gas processing complex
PJSC Gazprom, through its general contractor partner NIPIgazpererabotka (Nipigaz), has let a contract to China Gezhouba Group Corp. (CGGC), Wuhan, Hubei Province, to provide construction and assembly services for process equipment at subsidiary OOO Gazprom Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk's (GPB) 42 billion-cu m/year grassroots Amur natural gas processing plant under construction near Svobodny in Russia’s far-east Amur region.
CGGC will serve as contractor for a project involving associated construction works as well as installation of cryogenic gas separation units at the Amur gas processing plant, Gazprom said.
While a subcontractor for the installation project has yet to be named, Gazprom confirmed one will be selected from among Russian construction companies.
The operator disclosed neither the value nor duration of the contract, which follows GPB’s previous contract let to Linde AG, Munich, for licensing of its proprietary cryogenic gas separation technology for all five phases of the gas processing plant, including engineering and supply of units for ethane and natural gas liquids extraction and nitrogen rejection, as well as for helium purification, liquefaction, and storage.
Most recently, GPB let a €3.9-billion contract to a consortium of Maire Tecnimont SPA subsidiary Tecnimont SPA and Sinopec Engineering (Group) Co. Ltd. subsidiary Sinopec Ningbo Engineering Corp. to provide all engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and performance testing services for utilities, infrastructure, and off-site installations of the Amur gas processing plant, Maire Tecnimont and Sinopec Engineering said in separate June releases.
Integral to commissioning of the entire Amur complex, works under the utilities, infrastructure, and off sites contract package are due to be completed in 2023, according to the service providers.
At an overall estimated cost of €11.5 billion, the Amur gas processing plant comes as part of Gazprom’s implementation of its Eastern Gas Program (EGP) to integrate field developments, pipeline, and natural gas production centers in East Siberia and Russia’s Far East, the Amur plant will process multicomponent gas it receives from EGP’s Irkutsk and Yakutia gas production centers via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline to support Gazprom’s commitment to supply 38 billion cu m/year of Russian natural gas into China over 30 years beginning sometime between May 2019 and May 2021.
Gazprom officially broke ground on construction of the first of the plant’s six processing trains in October 2015 for a targeted Train-1 startup sometime in 2018.
In addition to producing about 2.5 million tpy of ethane, 1 million tpy of propane, 500,000 tpy of butane, and 200,000 tpy of pentane-hexane fraction, the Amur gas processing complex also will produce as much as 60 million-cu m/year of helium based on feedstock from the Chayandinskoye field, which together with the company’s other reserves in East Siberia, forms one of the largest helium reservoirs in the world.
Oman’s OTCCO to build key oil terminal
Plans for Oman’s Ras Markaz crude oil storage terminal moved ahead on Wednesday as officials signed an agreement for its construction with the Oman Tank Terminal Company (OTTCO).
The agreement was made between the Special Economic Zone Authority at Duqm, or Sezad, and OTTCO, a joint venture between Oman Oil Company (90%) and Takamul Investment Company (10%).
OTTCO can opt to undertake the full five-phase project itself or to contract out parts of the work, Oman News Agency reported.
The terminal, also known as the Ras Markaz crude oil storage park, is high-priority for Oman as it will create an alternative route for oil transportation. The project aims to replace the overcrowded Strait of Hormuz route, which hosts almost 40% of the world’s oil tanker traffic.
The project’s value has been estimated at USD 1.8 billion. Its first phase, expected to be operational in 2018, is targeting a capacity of 6 million barrels of crude.
Power utility staging tender for gas market entry consultant
The main power utility PPC has launched a tender worth 500,000 euros for a consultant to be tasked with preparing feasibility studies and a business plan as guidance for the utilty’s intended penetration of the country’s natural gas market.
PPC is interested in entering new business domains as a means of compensating for its reduced liquidity of recent years. Besides the natural gas market, PPC’s administration is showing a revitalized interest for greater involvement in photovoltaic park projects, through PPC Renewables, its wholly owned subsidiary.
According to the tender’s terms, participants will need to submit their offers by August 7.
The winning consultant’s tasks will include preparing a natural gas retail market analysis, strategic and business plans for this market, a stategic plan for the wholesale natural gas market, an analysis of existing natural gas infrastructure systems, including distribution networks, as well as feasibility studies for certain regional natural gas markets PPC is considering to enter.
The winning consultant will need to complete all tasks within a five-month period.
Kavala gas storage unit back on PCI list, FSRU in north ejected
A plan to transform a depleted natural gas deposit in south Kavala, northern Greece, into an underground gas storage facility has been re-included on an unfinalized list of EU Projects of Common Interest (PCI), while the development of a new floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) in Alexandroupoli, northeastern Greece, to be developed by Gastrade, has been removed from the list.
Latest revisions to the list, still unfinalized, were made during a session on June 30. EU officials are expected to meet in mid-July to finalize the PCI list before it is endorsed by the European Commission.
Over the past few days, the Greek government has intensified efforts to also have the Alexandroupoli FSRU included on the PCI list, which would facilitate EU funding.
The south Kavala underground gas storage facility, now back on the PCI list, had been removed during a revision made two years ago.
Its construction cost has been slashed to about half of an initial estimate of 400 million euros, which makes the project’s sustainability less demanding.
Energean Oil & Gas, the Greek firm exploiting deposits in the wider Kavala region, holds the rights to the depleted south Kavala deposit. The company has made repeated requests for a conversion of its existing south Kavala deposit license into a gas storage license, which is permittted by current law.
All other infrastructure projects of Greek interest have retained their places on the PCI list, energypress sources have informed.
These include the Poseidon gas pipeline, planned to run from Greece to Italy, indicating that this project is a serious contender for a role in a prospective new route to carry Russian gas to Europe (Turkish Stream) as well as another major project to bring gas to Europe from the eastern Mediterranean (East Med).
The Euro Asia Interconnector, a submarine cable project to link the Greek, Cypriot and Israeli electricity networks, as well as East Med, a prospective gas pipeline to transmit gas from Cyprus’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to mainland Greece via Crete, have also retained their places on the PCI list.
So, too, has the IGB, the Greek-Bulgarian Interconnector, for which a final investment decision is expected imminently.
Tesla, a prospective natural gas pipeline to offer a link from Greece to Austria, is also on the updated PCI list.