While the UK North Sea continues to struggle, with capital and operational spending currently stalling, major contracts are being doled out overseas, especially on the subsea front offshore West Africa and the US Gulf of Mexico.
One of the hottest properties in that regard is the Jubilee development offshore Ghana, which has a high subsea content. Now that the field development plan is fully approved by the Ghanaian government, operator Tullow is pressing ahead with issuing contracts/confirming letters of intent. The two latest Jubilee awards have gone to Sofec in London and Aberdeen’s Expro Group.
Sofec has secured the contract for the provision of mooring connectors for the first floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) to be installed on the Jubilee field. It says the external turret-moored FPSO will be installed in 1,100m water depth and is expected to start production in 2010.
First Subsea is supplying nine Ballgrab ball and taper connectors, with a minimum breaking load of 5,364 kN (kilo-Newtons) for the external turret’s mooring lines.
Ballgrab connectors will link the suction piles and ground-chain segments, interfacing directly with the mooring lines’ long-term mooring shackles. The female receptacle part of the connectors will be installed subsea with the piles, mounted on a docking porch. When the FPSO is in position, the male connector, attached to the mooring line, is lowered from the surface into the female receptacle to complete the mooring installation.
“We chose First Subsea as a supplier of this critical component because of their willingness to meet a challenging schedule,” said Caspar Heyl, lead mooring engineer for Sofec.
Well flow management group Expro is now setting up a new base in Ghana following the award of a substantial contract to deliver subsea, well test and data-acquisition services to Tullow for application on Jubilee Phase 1.
Ghana has been a strategic target for Expro since Tullow announced its intention to explore, and later develop, a major discovery. Indeed, Expro is the current incumbent for Tullow’s exploration and testing work. It is on the back of this success that Expro has been awarded the Jubilee Phase 1 subsea and intervention work for 30 months.
The Aberdeen group is to deliver a subsea deepwater intervention completion landing string using electrohydraulic technology, which will operate from a fifth-generation dynamic positioning rig. The company, which specialises in all aspects of well flow management, has also been awarded the data-acquisition and surface well test clean-up work for Tullow.
Robin Mair, Expro’s operations director, said: “This is a technically complex project that will utilise Expro’s market-leading deepwater well completion technology, which has a proven track record for safe and reliable operating performance in some of the most challenging environments across the world. This contract is a result of our ability to deliver challenging subsea projects safely, on time and budget and to the highest standards. Our expertise as solution providers and our commitment to operational excellence will ensure we work with Tullow to deliver exactly what is required on this landmark development.”
Jubilee is one of the largest oilfields discovered offshore West Africa in the past 10 years. The first FPSO will be capable of processing more than 120,000 barrels per day of oil and injecting more than 230,000 barrels per day of water, and 160million cu ft per day of produced gas.