Abu Dhabi asks for combined prices on Lower Zakum deals 

18 September 2009

Processing and reservoir injection work is worth more than $400m in total

State-owned offshore oil and gas operator Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (Adma-Opco) is pushing ahead with plans to boost production by tendering two key processing and reservoir injection projects at its oldest field.

The client is asking bidders to provide separate prices for each scheme, as well as a combined price. The combined value of the two contracts is more than $400m.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deals are part of the company’s plans to boost production at the offshore Lower Zakum field by 100,000 barrels a day (b/d) to 425,000 b/d.

The first contract covers the ‘demothballing’ of  Zakum Central Super Complex, a network of offshore oil and gas processing facilities. Adma-Opco decommissioned the complex in 1985 and, although it reopened it in 1988, it has only operated at about 50 per cent of its capacity since then.

Adma-Opco wants to revamp the processing facilities so that they can handle 300,000 b/d of oil and build facilities to house the additional staff required to work at the complex once it has been upgraded.

The second contract covers the construction of a platform and water injection facilities. The new facilities will gather seawater and pump it into the oil reservoir to maintain pressure and hence production at the ageing field.

Adma-Opco has prequalified the same group of engineering companies for the two deals: the UK’s Petrofac, France’s Technip, the UAE’s National Petroleum Construction Company, and India’s Larsen & Toubro.

One source at Adma-Opco says the firms are being asked to submit commercial bids for the first deal at the end of September.

The prequalified firms handed in their technical bids, outlining how they would carry out the work for the first contract, in January. Adma-Opco plans to award the contract by the end of the year.

Adma-Opco has set a 16 November deadline for commercial bids for the second contract, for which firms submitted technical bids in August.

Adma-Opco has also asked them to submit a combined price for the two contracts in November.

“They are tendering the greenfield [new injection facilities] and brownfield [revamp of the processing complex] projects together,” says the business development manager of one firm bidding on the deal.

“We have been asked to put in bids for both deals, but also a price to do them both together.”

The Adma-Opco source tells MEED the deals are part of a major drive by the company to revamp its existing production facilities and start production at new fields.

“We are moving ahead full steam,” the source says, adding that the company has been largely unaffected by the downturn. “We have not been too badly hit, and we intend to keep the current timing of our projects.”

Adma-Opco plans to increase its overall production to 1 million b/d by 2020 through upgrades to the Umm al-Shaif and Lower Zakum fields, and through increased production from previously untapped reservoirs.

In August, MEED reported that Technip had picked up a contract to design production facilities at Abu Dhabi’s Nasr field, one of the first deals to produce oil from an undeveloped field in more than four decades (MEED 7:8:09). 

The French firm completed a similar job for the Umm al-Lulu field in January 2009, and sources close to the two developments say Adma-Opco is likely to start construction work at the Umm al-Lulu and Nasr fields at the same time.

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