Total expects to award multimillion-pound construction contracts within days as it steps up the pace on its Laggan and Tormore gas development west of Shetland, one of the energy giant’s bosses said yesterday.
Patrice de Vivies, senior vice-president for northern Europe at Total Exploration and Production, said the French company was poised to choose contractors for the work at any time.
Irish firm Roadbridge has already been awarded the contract to build a road and prepare the site for the £500million gas terminal at Sullom Voe.
Roadbridge helped to build Shell’s gas terminal in County Mayo.
Last month, steel firm Corus said it had secured an order – worth almost £200million – to supply more than 320 miles of pipeline sections for the project.
International oil service company FMC Technologies announced recently it had signed an agreement with Total for the manufacture and supply of subsea production equipment for the project.
FMC’s contract is worth about £138million, with the equipment to be manufactured and assembled at facilities at Dunfermline, Kongsberg and Stavanger.
Total’s £2.5billion Laggan/Tormore scheme – being taken forward in partnership with Denmark’s Dong Energy – includes a new gas plant, which is expected to inject £200million into Shetland’s economy over 30 years.
About 500 construction jobs are anticipated, with up to 70 permanent positions at the gas plant when production starts in 2014.
Laggan and Tormore have combined estimated reserves of 230million barrels of oil equivalent.
The fields will be connected via a subsea pipeline to a gas-processing plant at Sullom Voe, with further export of processed gas to the UK Frigg pipeline system in the North Sea and on to the St Fergus terminal, near Peterhead.
Total’s decision to go ahead with the project was heavily influenced by a recent tax change to support the development of remote, deepwater gas fields and an industry and government taskforce that was set up to examine the potential for new infrastructure in the area.
Paris-based Total is also developing a second phase of its West Franklin gas/condensate field in the North Sea, with a new platform tied back to the Elgin installation.