Allseas has won the contract for the engineering, installation and pre-commissioning of the offshore pipeline and associated fibre optic cable for the Breagh gas development in the UK Southern North Sea.
Allseas will perform the required detailed design engineering and ultimately lay the 100km (62mile) or so 20-inch export line, 3-inch mono-ethylene glycol line and fibre optic cable from the Breagh ‘A’ platform to a beach valve station to be located at Coatham Sands, Teesside.
The Allseas pipelay vessel Lorelay will lay the main section of the pipeline with the Tog Mor laying the nearshore section.
The contract for the construction of the 10km (6mile) onshore section of pipeline is expected to be awarded before the end of this year.
The Breagh field is operated by RWE-Dea and located on UKCS bock 42/13, some 100km (60 miles) off the UK coast. First production from this large asset, which Scottish-Canadian company Sterling Resources pioneered before farming down its stake in this field to RWE Dea, the recoverable reserves of which may ultimately exceed 1trillion cu.ft.
“The awarding of this contract concludes another milestone in the development of the Breagh project,” said John Rapach, Sterling’s COO.
“We welcome Allseas to the project and look forward to working with them and RWE Dea as we advance towards first gas at Breagh in 2012.”
Sterling is also making headway on another North Sea front through the award of a package of five licences in the Dutch sector.
The net result is that Sterling will hold a 50% interest in the shallow geological horizons of blocks F14, F16, F17, F18 and L01b and will assume operatorship from Stratic Energy, which is now wholly owned by Enquest, which will continue to hold a 10% interest
The five blocks cover 1,550sq.km and are located 80km offshore in some 45m of water.
The shallow horizons in these blocks contain four oil discoveries, with several wells that tested oil with API gravities in excess of 30 degrees.
Sterling has acquired access to a recently re-processed regionally merged 3D seismic dataset which is significantly assisting the structural interpretation.
According to Azancot, the Netherlands award represents a “material” offshore growth opportunity.
“We will now begin preparations to drill an appraisal well during H2 2011,” added Azancot.