Biggest FEED Players Circle for Caldita-Barossa
Friday 7 July 2017
World-class contractors are preparing to submit bids for the front-end engineering and design contract related to the floating production, storage and offloading vessel bound for the Caldita-Barossa gas project off northern Australia.
However, identifying the exact make-up of the bidding groups is tricky because of the bidding scenarios offered by project operator ConocoPhillips.
Earlier this year, 13 companies pre-qualified to compete for the FEED contract. They included engineering majors as well as FPSO companies, said sources.
It is understood the 13 came from a list of potential contenders including Aker Solutions, Amec Foster Wheeler, Fluor, KBR, JGC Corporation, Technip, Wood Group, WorleyParsons, as well as FPSO companies SBM Offshore, Modec, BW Offshore and Bumi Armada, said sources.
The 13 qualified companies were then advised they could introduce new companies into their bidding teams, or combine with others from the group of 13, said sources.
What followed was a process whereby ConocoPhillips sought clarity on the bidding groups, and that resulted in certain companies withdrawing.
Sources suggested Fluor, Technip, Wood Group, WorleyParsons, SBM Offshore, Modec, BW Offshore and Bumi Armada are still in contention, although some have banded together, and offshore builders in South Korea, China and India are also in the mix.
Bids for the FEED work are due later this month, said sources, and ConocoPhillips will take its time to evaluate the offers, with selection of FEED contractors earmarked for early 2018.
ConocoPhillips has still not determined if the FPSO will be a conversion or a newbuild, or whether it will be owned or leased.
The pre-FEED work for the project is understood to be ongoing in Houston.
Wood Group Mustang previously performed an initial topsides concept study in 2015.
The FPSO will be a VLCC-size vessel with a topsides weight of up to 40,000 tonnes.
The floater will separate gas, condensate and water, and remove bulk carbon dioxide.
Lean gas will be exported to the Darwin liquefied natural gas plant via a 260-kilometre 26-inch subsea pipeline to a tie-in point on the existing Bayu-Undan pipeline, also operated by ConocoPhillips.
The lean gas stream from Caldita-Barossa is similar to the Bayu-Undan field — the current feedstock into Darwin - and this will avoid major modifications at Darwin LNG.
Other elements of the project include the subsea production system and the umbilicals, risers and flowlines. Pre-FEED work is ongoing for these two elements as well.
Gas 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.
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 its case up to 16%.
The field owners are operator ConocoPhillips and SK Energy each holding 37.5%, and Santos with 25%.
The project partners have just completed a two-well appraisal drilling programme using the semi-submersible Atwood Osprey.
Santos said results significantly reduced resource uncertainty and further confirmed the high deliverability potential of the primary Elang reservoir.
“Subsurface data obtained from the appraisal programme will now be integrated into subsurface models to support a front-end engineering and design entry decision in early 2018,” added Santos.