A Scottish fabrication yard has started work on a North Sea gasfield development which will create at least 165 jobs north of the border.
Workers at Burntisland Fabrication’s (BiFab) Methil site cut the first steel yesterday for the jackets to be used at GDF Suez’s £1.4billion Cygnus development.
BiFab said it would create 115 jobs in Fife to help manufacture the four jackets, worth a combined £47million.
The fabrication company’s Lewis site is also expected to benefit from the project, while GDF Suez said it would create 50 posts in Aberdeen to support Cygnus.
Along with partners Centrica Energy and Bayerngas, GDF Suez expects to create 4,000 jobs during the construction phase of Cygnus’s development.
BiFab said it would deliver three of the jackets in April next year, with the final one being completed 12 months later.
GDF Suez Exploration and Production UK managing director Jean-Claude Perdigues said: “Today’s cutting of first steel for the Cygnus jackets marks another important project milestone, securing and creating jobs in Scotland for the next two years.”
Centrica Energy Upstream’s southern North Sea director Greg McKenna described investment at Cygnus as “critical” to unlocking the basin and securing gas for the company’s UK customers.
BiFab managing director John Robertson said: “The award of this project has allowed us to recruit 15 additional apprentices for our operations at Methil and Burntisland, and continue to grow as a major manufacturer of topsides and jackets for the North Sea energy sector.”
The first steel has already been cut for the 1,600-tonne Cygnus Alpha wellhead platform, which is being built by Heerema Fabrication Group’s yard in Hartlepool.
Cygnus – the largest gas find in the southern North Sea for 25 years – is 93 miles offshore and holds 635billion cubic feet of proved and probable reserves, with first gas expected at the end of 2015.