Caldita-Barossa Pre-FEED Contracts up for Grabs
Friday 28 October 2016
ConocoPhillips is zeroing in on its preferred contractors to perform pre-front-end engineering and design on the offshore facilities for the Caldita-Barossa gas project off northern Australia.
Three pre-FEED packages are understood to be up for grabs — one for the big floating production, storage and offloading vessel and two for the array of subsea equipment, including the export pipeline to Darwin, where Caldita-Barossa volumes will be processed at ConocoPhillips’ Darwin LNG facility.
For the FPSO, sources said Wood Group Mustang is well positioned for the pre-FEED contract, having carried out an initial topsides concept study last year via a master services agreement it has with ConocoPhillips, said sources.
For the two subsea packages, Genesis Oil & Gas is believed to have a slender lead over IntecSea Engineering, Granherne and Wood Group JP Kenny. Sources indicated previously the FPSO scope would be managed out of Houston, while the subsea work would be dealt with in Perth.
The FPSO will be a VLCC-sized vessel with a topsides weight of up to 40,000 tonnes.
The FPSO will separate gas, condensate and water, and remove bulk carbon dioxide.
Lean gas will be exported to Darwin via a 260-kilometre 26-inch subsea pipeline to a tie-in point on the existing Bayu-Undan pipeline, also operated by ConocoPhillips.
A ConocoPhillips executive said recently that the company is yet to determine if the FPSO will be a conversion or a newbuild.
The lean gas stream from Caldita-Barossa is similar to the Bayu-Undan field, the current feedstock into Darwin, and this would avoid major modifications at Darwin LNG meaning “business as usual”.
After the pre-FEED work is completed, ConocoPhillips will proceed with competitions for the lucrative FEED and engineering procurement and construction contracts.
These FEED and EPC offerings — with tendering earmarked to begin in the second half of 2017 — will be hotly contested by major services contractors.
The engineering procurement and construction contract for the FPSO could be worth more than $1 billion, said sources.
Other elements of the project include the subsea production system and the umbilicals, risers and flowlines.
The idea is that volumes from Caldita-Barossa will provide backfill to Darwin LNG in about 2022, when the Bayu-Undan field begins to run down. Water depths at the field location are between 200 metres and 320 metres.
ConocoPhillips said recently it is in the process of acquiring new 3D seismic in the area, and has hired the semi-submersible drilling rig Atwood Osprey from January 2017 to drill one or two further appraisal wells, which it is hoped will resolve subsurface uncertainty.
Reserves have not been publicised for Caldita-Barossa, although joint venture partner Santos earlier this year booked 46 million barrels of oil equivalent to its 2C contingent resources “following the integration of successful appraisal drilling results in the Barossa field”.
ConocoPhillips has said previously that the presence of “significant accumulations of natural gas” has already been confirmed in the Caldita-Barossa permits.
The Barossa field was discovered in 2007. It also contains condensate and, like many of the gas fields in the Bonaparte basin, has a high carbon dioxide content, in this case up to 16%.
The field owners are operator ConocoPhillips and SK Energy each on 37.5%, with Santos on 25%.