Onshore Pearl work rolled out

14 October 2005
The Royal Dutch/Shell Grouphas issued for bid two new packages covering the construction of onshore facilities on its estimated $7,000 million integrated Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) project at Ras Laffan. Technical bids for both engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages are due to be submitted by 4 January, while commercial offers are scheduled to be returned by 23 February (MEED 23:9:05).

The first package, called C-4 and estimated to be worth $700 million-800 million, will be for the construction of feed gas processing facilities. The companies prequalified to bid are: a team of Paris-based Technip,with Japan's Chiyoda Corporation; UAE-based Petrofac; Toyo Engineering Corporationof Japan; South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company; Italy's Snamprogetti;and US-based Washington Group International.

Package C-5, which is estimated to be worth about $1,000 million, will involve the construction of a liquid processing unit. The prequalifiers are Technip/Chiyoda, Petrofac, Hyundai E&C, Toyo and Snamprogetti.

The onshore facilities, which centre on the construction of a GTL plant with two 70,000-barrel-a-day trains, will be carried out in nine separate packages. They include air separation units, storage tanks, a gas treatment plant and water treatment. The first train is due to come on stream in 2009 and the second is scheduled for completion two years later. JGC Corporationof Japan, with the US' Halliburton KBR,carried out the front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for all packages.

In late September, the joint venture of JGC with Halliburton KBR received a letter of intent to project manage the entire onshore works programme and provide engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services for the synthesis core, utilities and infrastructure packages on the complex.

For the offshore works, technical bids were submitted on 1 October for the wellhead platforms package, which involves the installation of two wellhead jackets with processing topsides. Bidders for the estimated $300 million contract include Jebel Ali-based J Ray McDermott (Middle East), Italy's Saipem, South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Abu Dhabi-based Gulf Piping Company.

Bids are due to be submitted on 8 October for the other main offshore package, covering pipelines running from the platforms to the onshore gas processing plant. Prequalifiers for the $150 million package include McDermott, Saipem and HHI. Both contracts are due to be awarded by mid-2006.

More details are expected to be given on the status of the Pearl GTL tendering programme on 11 October, when Shell holds a town hall meeting in Doha.

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