BPTT Awards Cassia Job for C platform to Fluor
Friday 24 March 2017
BP’s Trinidad & Tobago subsidiary BPTT has awarded a key engineering contract for a new offshore processing and compression platform to US contractor Fluor, putting the company in the driver’s seat for a potential construction contract.
Fluor has been awarded the front-end engineering and design contract for the Cassia C processing and compression project.
It is understood that BP, which also refers to the development as the Trinidad Offshore Compression project, is looking for a processing and compression capacity of between 1.1 billion and 1.3 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas and would like to have the project online around the middle of 2020.
Cassia C would be BPTT’s third Cassia platform, handling gas coming from its operations in the prolific Columbus basin off the south-east coast of the island of Trinidad, where the company accounts for an estimated 60% of the country’s oil and gas production.
Cassia C will be linked to the existing Cassia B platform, which has processing capacity of around 2 Bfcd and takes gas from the Cannonball, Serrette, Mango, Kapok, Immortelle and Cassia A platforms.
Gas from Cassia B, which was installed in 2003, is sent through two pipelines to shore, where it feeds the Atlantic LNG facility as well as Trinidad’s large petrochemical industry.
It is understood that BPTT asked contractors to include a lump-sum turnkey cost estimate for the project as well in an effort to speed up delivery.
That additional component likely gives Fluor an advantage when bidding for the future engineering, procurement, construction and installation contract, a source familiar with the process stated
The FEED award was made to Houston-based Fluor, not to its CFHI joint venture with China's Offshore Engineering Company, but sources indicated the CFHI fabrication yard at Zhuhai in China could later be under consideration as a candidate to build the facility.
In the past, BPTT has used the Trinidad Offshore Fabricators (Tofco) yard in Trinidad to build its offshore platforms, including topsides for its latest project, the Juniper production platform.
However, the jacket and piles portion of the Juniper project had to be sent to the Gulf Island Fabrication yard in Texas in the US due to construction delays at Tofco, which could influence fabrication plans for Cassia C.
BPTT has been actively developing natural gas projects off Trinidad and expects first gas to be produced from both the Sercan and Juniper platforms this year, with combined production capacity of more than 850 million cubic feet of gas.
Next in the queue would be Angelin, a proposed tie-back to the Serrette platform, which itself ties into the main BP gas sales line to shore at Cassia.
It is understood that contractors McDermott and Technip are still vying for the EPCI award there.
Cassia C and the developments feeding into it are all welcome news for gas-starved Trinidad, which has seen its production decline from a high of 4.2 Bcfd to around 3.3 Bcfd, causing severe gas shortages for its downstream sector.
Earlier this month, petrochemical producer Methanol Holdings shut two of its five facilities on Trinidad due to lack of gas supply.