Van Oord of the Netherlands has been awarded two contracts by the UK’s Subsea 7 for the construction of a landfall and the execution of subsea rock installation works in Egypt.

The projects are part of UK-based BP’s West Nile Delta project, which comprises the development of a series of gas fields, located 65 kilometres off the northern coast of Egypt.

The landfall scope of work consists of the installation of a cofferdam, trenching and pipe pull activities, and will be executed in 2017. The landfall location is at the Burrulus terminal near Idku, 50km from Alexandria.

Marine engineering company Subsea 7 was awarded a $750m-plus deal for work on the development in early 2016. The contract scope includes engineering, procurement, installation and pre-commissioning of the subsea infrastructure for 12 wells located in the offshore oil fields Giza, Fayoum and Raven.

Under the contract, Subsea 7 will oversee the construction of 80km of umbilicals and 220km of pipelines. The contract scope also includes the installation of export lines from the subsea location to the Idku liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal.

The West Nile Delta North Alexandria Concession development is Egypt’s biggest ever oil and gas project. The concession has proven reserves of 5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 55 million barrels of condensate.

The North Alexandria development is expected to produce up to 1 billion cubic feet a day of gas when fully operational. This is equal to about 25 per cent of the country’s current consumption.