Total has made its final investment decision for the $10billion Moho Nord development offshore Congo-Brazzaville, West Africa and issued key contract awards to Aker Solutions of Norway and Hyundai of South Korea.
Aker has won the $850million subsea production system package covering both Moho Nord and Moho Bilondo and its Aberdeen operation gets a significant part of the work to do.
The contract covers: delivery of 28 vertical subsea trees including wellhead systems, two installation and workover control systems, seven manifold structures, subsea control and tie-in systems. The contract also contains options related to Moho Nord.
Management, engineering and procurement will primarily be performed at Aker Solutions’ headquarters in Fornebu, Norway. The subsea trees and the workover systems will be manufactured at the Tranby manufacturing centre, outside Oslo.
Fabrication of the manifolds will be carried out at Aker Solutions’ facility in Egersund on the west coast of Norway, while the facility in Aberdeen in the UK will deliver the control systems and the wellheads.
Turning to Hyundai, the company has bagged two contracts totaling $2billion in value, namely a $1.3billion order for a floating production unit (FPU) and a $700million order for a tension leg platform (TLP).
Hyundai Heavy will carry out engineering, procurement, supply, construction, and commissioning for the two offshore facilities.
The 14,600-tonne vertically moored floating TLP will be used to extract oil and natural gas, and transport output to the floating production unit. The 62,000-tonne FPU, measuring 250m length overall by 44m breadth by 18m depth moulded, will process the received oil and gas, and send the products to onshore plants via subsea pipelines.
The FPU has a designed production capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 2.5million cu.m of natural gas per day.
The TLP and FPU should be installed at Moho Nord field in the first half of 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Located on the Moho-Bilondo licence, Moho Nord comprises the Moho-Bilondo Phase 1bis and Moho Nord projects. The reserves target for this huge, largely subsea project is estimated at some 485million barrels oil equivalent.
First oil is expected in 2015, with output reaching 140,000 barrels oil equivalent per day by 2017. The development is located some 75km from Pointe-Noire and 25km west of N’Kossa in water depths ranging 450-1,200m.
The project is the latest step in developing the license, following on from Moho Bilondo Phase 1E, brought on stream in 2008.
For Phase 1bis, a total of 11 subsea wells in the Miocene will be tied back to the existing FPU (floating production unit) on Moho-Bilondo, whose processing capacity will be increased by 40,000barrels oil equivalent per day.
For Moho Nord, 17 subsea wells targeting Miocene reservoirs will be drilled and tied back to a new floating production unit (FPU) and 17 more subsea wells targeting Albian reservoirs will be developed from a new build tension leg platform.
Before being exported by pipeline to the onshore Djeno Terminal, the new production will be processed on the FPU, which will have a capacity of 100,000 boepd. Speculation is that Doris Engineering with Hyundai will get the vessel package.