New investment in production and processing facilities in Europe, the Middle East and Australia are ensuring that the engineering contracting community has healthy order books. Eugene McCarthy reports.
International engineering and project management company AMEC has been awarded two asset support contracts by chemical giant SABIC UK Petrochemicals.
The first is a £30m (€37m) asset support contract for plant turnaround services for SABIC’s petrochemicals assets at Wilton and North Tees in the North East of England. The award, an extension to an existing contract, is for planning, preparation, execution and management of resource and supply chain for major turnarounds and will run through to 2014. It includes SABIC’s aromatics, low density polyethylene (LDPE) and olefins plants (Fig. 1).
The second is a three year, £40m (€50m) extension to an existing integrated maintenance contract, also at Wilton and North Tees, which will also run through to 2014.
AMEC also has been awarded a £10m (€12.4m) contract to provide project services to BP for the Kinneil enhanced gas separation (EGS) project in Grangemouth, Scotland.
The project will modify and extend BP’s existing Kinneil crude oil stabilisation terminal. AMEC will work in partnership with BP to deliver mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation services, as well as construction and project management.
The main activities of the Kinneil terminal are stabilisation of crude oil from the North Sea Forties Field and processing and treatment of natural gas liquids from the St Fergus gas terminals. This latest project will enable the facility to process unstabilised crude oil, which has a high gas to oil ratio, to meet the requirements of BP’s customers.
In another development, the company has been awarded a project management consultancy (PMC) services contract by the Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company (ADGAS) for the front end engineering design (FEED) phase of its flaring and emission reduction project at its liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Das Island, United Arab Emirates (UAE).[Page Break]
The 10-month contract, the value of which has not been announced, will be carried out by AMEC’s team in the UAE and will help ADGAS to reduce carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emissions at the plant. This is in line with ADGAS’s policy of minimising the environmental impact of its operations and, as a result, contributing towards reducing the impact on global warming.
AMEC has also won a second PMC in the UAE, this time from Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) for the execution phase of the Nasr phase-1 and Umm Lulu phase-1 field offshore development projects. The multi-million dollar, 30-month contract covers the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of these offshore developments.
Meanwhile the Clough AMEC joint venture has been awarded a contract valued in excess of AU$30m (€24m )for the operability, reliability and maintainability (ORM) component of Chevron’s Wheatstone offshore facility offshore Western Australia.
The scope of work involves building the maintenance database, assuring operational readiness for the offshore facility, including writing of all operations procedures, all training and development programmes, and operations engineering and support services. The work will be performed by Clough AMEC, with support from AMEC’s specialist ‘performance improvement’ team.
The project starts immediately, will employ over 50 people at its peak, and will last three and a half years.
In a second project win in Australia, the Clough AMEC joint venture has been awarded a contract to provide maintenance support to the 1.3b m3/y onshore gas treatment plant and the offshore unmanned wellhead platform for Eni’s Blacktip project, supplying gas to the country’s Northern Territory.
The scope of work involves providing support for routine and campaign maintenance along with specialist consultancy services, multidiscipline engineering, procurement, and management of subcontractors and fabrication.[Page Break]
Contracts
Foster Wheeler has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCm) services contract by TOTAL Raffinage-Chimie for the revamp of a hydrodesulfurisation unit at the company’s refinery in Antwerp, Belgium.
The revamp should enable the refinery to produce jet fuel with a sulphur content below 30 ppm and diesel with a sulphur content below 10 ppm, in accordance with European Union requirements.
Foster Wheeler has already completed the FEED for this revamp. The revamp is expected to be mechanically complete by the end of July 2013.
The company has also won a contract from PT Pertamina (Persero), the national oil company of the Republic of Indonesia, to provide project management consultancy services for the residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC) project at the Cilacap refinery, on the island of Java.
In the Caribbean, Foster Wheeler has been awarded the basic design and FEED contract by Complejo GNL del Este, a consortium formed by Dominican and Colombian companies that participate in the energy sector of these countries, for a new LNG receiving terminal and jetty to be built in San Pedro de Marcorís in the Dominican Republic. Foster Wheeler has previously completed a feasibility study for the selection of the most suitable technology for the new terminal, which will be designed for a send-out capacity of 240m ft3/d, with an LNG storage tank of 160,000 m3. The design will also consider future capacity expansions up to 700 m ft3/d.
The company also has been awarded a feasibility study by Albanian Refining & Marketing of Oil (ARMO) relating to the modernisation of two refineries, located at Ballsh and Fier in Albania. ARMO intends to modernise the existing refineries at Ballsh and Fier to restore production to the original design capacity and produce transportation fuels in line with current EU regulations. The study is expected to be completed by mid-2012.
For its part, Fluor has formally signed a contract with PETRONAS Gas Berhad to provide FEED services for a new LNG regasification terminal in Malaysia. The new terminal will supply gas to an adjacent 300 MW combined cycle power plant in the town of Lahad Datu, Sabah.
Fluor was previously part of a joint venture that provided PETRONAS with preliminary engineering services for a new LNG liquefaction plant at the existing facility in Bintulu, Malaysia.
In the UAE, Fluor has won a FEED contract from ADMA-OPCO for new offshore facilities located at the Nasr field approximately 30 km northeast of Umm Shaif super complex. The Nasr full field development project includes seven wellhead towers, super complex facilities including gas processing and oil separation production facilities, utilities platform, living quarters, infield subsea pipelines and an export pipeline to Das Island.
Jacobs Engineering has been awarded a contract from BP Raffinaderij Rotterdam to provide engineering and procurement services, as well as engineering assistance during construction, commissioning and start-up for a major shutdown of the fluid catalytic cracker unit (FCCU) at the Rotterdam refinery in The Netherlands.
The 400,000 b/d Rotterdam refining facility, which is Europe's second largest, is an important part of BP's production capacity. Jacobs is currently executing a multi-year programme of micro, mid-sized and large projects at the refinery. For the FCCU shutdown, Jacobs' scope of work involves replacement of the end-of-life power recovery train and regenerator ballistic separator and cyclones.
Simon Carves has been awarded contracts to execute the process design package (PDP) and FEED for a new-build ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) facility to be built in the Far East. The plant, based on a licensed high-pressure autoclave reaction process, will produce speciality EVA grades.
Simon Carves will execute the two phases concurrently to meet the project schedule that is driven by lead times for key equipment, with plant start-up planned in 2014. The majority of Simon Carves’ scope is expected to be delivered in 12 months, with its involvement continuing through detailed design to commissioning and start-up.[Page Break]
Cheniere selects Bechtel for LNG trains
Bechtel has been selected by Cheniere Energy Partners to provide engineering, procurement, and construction services for two new liquefaction trains at the Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, USA. The project builds on Bechtel’s previous work at Sabine Pass where the company designed, built, and expanded the LNG receiving facility.
“We are thrilled Cheniere Partners has selected Bechtel for this important project that will transform Sabine Pass into a bi-directional facility capable of liquefying and exporting natural gas as well as importing and regasifying foreign-sourced LNG,” said Jack Futcher, president of Bechtel’s oil, gas, and chemicals business unit. “We look forward to continuing our successful collaboration with them.”
Bechtel will design, construct, and commission the two liquefaction trains using the ConocoPhillips Optimised Cascade technology. The liquefaction trains will be built next to the existing facilities at the Sabine Pass LNG terminal, which include five tanks with storage capacity of 16.9 b ft3 equivalent, two docks that can handle vessels up to 265,000 m3, and vaporisers with regasification capacity of 4b ft3/d. Construction is expected to begin in 2012.
"Bechtel was chosen to develop and construct our liquefaction facilities due to their extensive LNG capabilities and experience in building some of the world's largest LNG production facilities. Our trains are being designed with the best combination of efficiency, cost, and reliability, and with the turndown capability needed to provide flexible LNG delivery programmes," said Charif Souki, chairman and ceo of Cheniere Energy Partners.
