Wood Group Has Anchor and Tigris in its Sights
Friday 10 March 2017
Wood Group is understood to be in pole position to win a pre-front-end engineering and design contract on the Anchor and Tigris developments in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico.
The work will involve the topsides of semi-submersible production facilities for the Chevron project.
The UK-listed engineering player is believed to be the last standing out of a field that also included contenders KBR, Audubon Engineering, EDG and Worley Parsons, with competitors having already received notice, multiple industry sources said.
An award would mark another success for Wood Group, which has come up strong on recent US Gulf projects including topsides engineering work for the Mad Dog 2 facility in partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries, as well as front-end topsides work for Anadarko’s potential Shenandoah semisub.
Amid the industry downturn it has also managed to secure jobs with Noble Energy for the Leviathan project off Israel and Statoil’s Peregrino 2 project off Brazil.
Discussions are still under way for the hull of the potential Chevron project, with a field of design contenders seen as including KBR, Aker and SBM Offshore, as well as potentially Exmar and an internal Chevron proposal.
That in-house option may be getting special consideration in the interest of keeping the company’s own engineering, procurement and construction staff busy, one source suggested.
The project is for a mid-sized semi-submersible platform of about 100,000 barrels per day, potentially a ‘design one, build two’ scenario if the US supermajor proceeds with both projects.
The pre-FEED work would be expected to run about nine months, and the same contractors could potentially carry over into FEED work to follow in late 2017.
Anchor, hailed by Chevron as a “hub class” discovery, is seen as the stronger of the two finds and would likely proceed first. The late 2014 discovery was made in Green Canyon Block 807, about 140 miles (224 kilometres) offshore in 5180 feet of water.
Chevron holds a 55% operating stake, with Cobalt on 20%, Samson Offshore on 12.5% and Venari on 12.5%.
Tigris, which would be set to include the Tiber, Guadalupe and Gibson discoveries, is seen as more complex given the three fields involved in the Keathley Canyon area of the deep-water US Gulf. Chevron took over operatorship at the 2009 Tiber find in 2015, part of a joint development agreement for 24 blocks with UK supermajor BP and US player ConocoPhillips.
When it comes to size, the proposed duo would lie between Chevron’s two existing operated semi-subs in the US Gulf — Blind Faith, with capacity for 65,000 bpd, and the giant Jack & St Malo, designed to produce up to 170,000 bpd from Lower Tertiary reservoirs.