Technip Oceania wins ConocoPhillips contract

ConocoPhillips has awarded the first engineering contract for its Barossa offshore project to Technip Oceania for the supply of the subsea production system (SPS) and associated installation support.

Barossa’s offshore development concept includes a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facility, SPS and gas export pipeline, located in Commonwealth waters 300 kilometres north of Darwin.

ConocoPhillips Australia West president Chris Wilson said the award of the contract was another significant step in positioning Barossa as a leading candidate to extend the life of the Darwin LNG facility for another two decades.

“The SPS facilities include critical, long lead time equipment which is required to be ordered prior to a final investment decision in order to meet the project schedule,” Mr Wilson said.

“We continue to focus on strong cost discipline with all our selected contractors, developing the certainty of cost, schedule and execution planning required to compete in our global portfolio and support a final investment decision.”

The Barossa offshore gas and light condensate project is in the front-end engineering design phase and, subject to commercial arrangements, will provide a new source of gas beyond the existing Darwin LNG facility when the current offshore gas supply from Bayu-Undan is exhausted.

A division of Tecnhip, TechnipFMC, is also currently in a front-end engineering design for the FPSO facility design competition in a consortium with Samsung Heavy Industries against MODEC.

Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher said the joint owners of Barossa were making god progress on several fronts.

“We’re making good progress in the front-end engineering and design (FEED) phase including the evaluation of bids for the gas export pipeline,” Mr Gallagher said.

“We are also looking at technical proposals for the floating production storage and offloading facility from both MODEC and the Technip/Samsung Heavy Industries consortium.

“An invitation to tender for the development drilling contract has also been released, further advancing the project to meet DLNG’s backfill timetable."

Mr Gallagher said Barossa’s successful development will more than double Santos’ Northern Australia production based on its higher equity position in the project.

The Barossa development entered FEED in April last year and is targeting FID in early 2020.