Doha • J Ray McDermott, (J Ray), has won the contract to provide Front End Egineering Design (FEED) services for Barzan Offshore Platform Topsides and Pipelines for ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum (QP). The engineering services for the detailed design for the wellhead jackets, temporary work decks and sub-sea templates are also being executed by J Ray under a separate work order to allow for accelerated jack-up rig drilling operations.
The company will be required to coordinate a comprehensive interface management plan between the two work orders. The Barzan project is a multi-billion dollar scheme to develop a portion of Qatar's North Field to provide extra natural gas production for the domestic sector.
Stewart Mitchell, J Ray Vice-President and General Manager (Middle East and India), said: 'We have a long history of working successfully with ExxonMobil and QP. Since 2004, of the six million-plus fabrication man-hours spent on Qatar projects the Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) remains the industry average."
He said: "We have been working with QP and all the major oil and gas companies in Qatar, including the North Field, for the last 45 years. In the last 15 years alone we have designed, procured, fabricated and installed in excess of 130,000MT of facilities and laid 335 km of pipelines in Qatari waters."
RasGas intends to execute the FEED services offshore for the Barzan Project to include a natural gas offshore production system with conventional wellhead platforms, intra-field pipelines and export pipelines, to the onshore Barzan Gas Plant located at Ras Laffan Industrial City (RLC).
The FEED objective is to evolve the selected concept to the technically feasible, fit-for-purpose and optimal CAPEX solution for development of the Barzan gas reserves. The FEED results and recommendations will be used by RasGas and Exxon Mobil to perform internal reviews, seek shareholder project sanction and as the basis for an EPC Lump Sum Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the project offshore facilities.
The offshore production system will require the initial development of three three wellhead platforms to produce 1.7 billion standard cubic feet per day (bscfd) of non-associated gas. The export pipelines will be designed to transport 2.55 bscfd to allow for potential future production capability. Overall project facilities shall be designed for 30-year service life.
As a general objective, the Barzan Project offshore facilities will be designed in such a way the structures, facilities, equipment, materials and systems are compatible with and similar to the existing RasGas offshore facilities in the North Field to the maximum extent possible. First-phase production at Barzan of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of gas is scheduled for 2012. Eventual output will be almost double that amount.
© The Peninsula 2008
