
Saipem has clinched a US$1Bn contract to renovate gas production platforms and lay pipelines in the Mediterranean offshore Libya
The Milan, Italy-headquartered subsidiary of Italian energy group Eni secured the contract from Mellitah Oil & Gas, a consortium formed by National Oil Corp of Libya and Eni North Africa for the Bouri gas utilisation project.
Under this order, Saipem will be responsible for engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of facilities on platforms and laying 28 km of pipelines connecting the Bouri DP3, DP4 and Sabratha platforms.
It will install a 5,000-tonne gas recovery module onto the existing DP4 offshore facility on the Bouri field, which lies in water depths between 145 m and 183 m.
Main lifting operations will be executed by the semi-submersible crane vessel Saipem 7000. “With this award, Saipem confirms its commitment and competitive positioning offshore Libya,” the company said.
“The completion of the project will make an important contribution to reducing CO2 emissions in Libya.”
The Bouri field is in Block NC-41, 120 km north of the Libyan coast, in the Gulf of Gabes. It was thought to hold around 4.5Bn barrels of oil and 3.5 tcf of gas, making it the largest producing oilfield in the Mediterranean.
Bouri was developed in the late 1990s, with two production platforms (DP4 and DP3) and three subsea wells tied back to DP3. A floating storage and offloading tanker with a storage capacity of around 1.5M barrels is tied to the DP4 platform.
The Sabratha platform is 110 km from the coast, processing gas and condensate from the Bahr Essalam offshore field. After treatment on the platform, condensate is pumped through a 10-inch pipeline to the Mellitah plant for further treatment and export. Gas is transported through a 36-inch pipeline to Mellitah for final treatment and onward transmission.
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