Saipem granted $4.5 billion contract for compression complexes

(Photo: Reuters)

Qatargas has awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Italy’s Saipem to construct two offshore natural gas compression complexes in the North Field offshore Qatar.

The contract is the largest single offshore contract by total value in the company’s history, Saipem said.

The work includes engineering, procurement, fabrication and installation of two offshore natural gas compression complexes designed to sustain production at the North Field.

North Field Production Sustainability Offshore Complexes Project, as the project is known, includes two of the largest fixed steel jacket compression platforms ever built, flare platforms, interconnecting bridges, living quarters and interface modules.

The contract follows the award in early 2021 related to offshore facilities for extraction and transportation of natural gas from the same field. The North Field East project is an expansion of the North Field, the world’s largest single non-associated natural gas field northeast of the Qatar peninsula in the Persian Gulf.

The North Field is the southern part of a giant natural gas field that Qatar shares with Iran. The Iranian side of the field is known as South Pars.

Qatar has stated it expects the North Field East project NFE project to boost the country’s LNG production by 43% from 77 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 110Mtpa.

Qatar Energy announced plans to expand the field in April 2017. First gas from the $28.75 billion project is expected to start operations by 2025. Total production is expected to be 1.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.