Maersk Drilling and Solstad Offshore are providing drilling rig and anchor handlers to support Inpex Operations Australia as it expands the Ichthys project, in the Timor Sea, west of Darwin, Northern Territories
2010-built jack-up rig Maersk Deliverer is drilling development wells on the Ichthys field, where the world’s largest production semi-submersible is piping gas to an LNG plant along the longest offshore pipeline in the southern hemisphere.
On 20 November, Solstad Offshore announced it secured contract extensions for two of its anchor handlers to support Maersk Deliverer for nearly three more years.
This will see 87.4-m UT 731 clean design vessels Normand Scorpion (2009-built) and Normand Sirius (2014-built) operating on the Ichthys development until at least August 2023.
They have been supporting Maersk Deliverer since Q1 2020 on the field, operating from Broome, Australia.
Gas and condensate liquids at Ichthys are processed on semi-submersible production platform, Ichthys Explorer, 220 km offshore Western Australia. Liquids are further processed on the nearby Ichthys Venturer floating production, storage and offloading facility and exported via tankers.
Gas from Ichthys Explorer is piped along the 890-km export pipeline to an LNG production and export facility in Darwin. Production on these facilities started in 2018. Inpex has initiated a new phase of development to prolong the production life of the Ichthys field.
It has contracted McDermott to install more umbilicals, risers and flowlines and to engineer a compression module to boost gas pressure through the export pipeline on Ichthys Explorer.
Opportunities for offshore support vessels and drilling rigs will be discussed during Riviera Maritime Media’s Offshore Support Journal, Asia virtual confernce on 2-3 December 2020 - use this link to access details and register for this event
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