UAE-based National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) has been officially awarded the $766m contract to carry out engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work on Abu Dhabi’s Umm al-Lulu offshore field, project owner Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (Adma-Opco) announced.

The contract for package one of the Umm al-Lulu full field development, which was first reported by MEED in May, was signed on 18 June by senior executives of both companies.

The EPC work for package one comprises the construction and installation of six new wellhead towers, along with a riser platform topside, 90 kilometres of infield pipelines, 125km of main oil lines, fibre-optic cables (100km) and brownfield modifications on two existing wellhead towers at the field.

The larger package two is still in the bidding stage with no official award announced. South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and a consortium of NPCC and Technip resubmitted commercial bids after the original frontrunner, Italy’s Saipem, was disqualified earlier in the year.

The scope of package two comprises the construction of a super complex consisting of a gas treatment platform, a separation platform, a riser platform, a utilities platform, an accommodation platform, a water disposal platform and two flare platforms.

Early production facilities are already under construction at Umm al-Lulu. India’s Larsen & Toubro won a EPC $225m contract in September 2011 to build wellhead towers and other facilities on the field.

Umm al-Lulu, along with the Nasr and Satah al-Razboot (Sarb) full field developments, are part of Adma-Opco’s plans to increase its total crude production to 1 million barrels a day (b/d) by 2020, up from the current 600,000 b/d.