Petrofac wins $650m Qatar gas sweetening deal

31 March 2010

Delayed Dukhan and Mesaieed gas deal to move ahead

The UK’s Petrofac has secured an estimated $650m contract to upgrade state-run Qatar Petroleum’s (QP) gas processing facilities at Dukhan and Mesaieed.

The company’s price of about $650m beat an offer from a consortium of Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company with the US’ Black & Veatch in a final round of negotiations. The firms submitted their prices for the project in mid-March in the third round of commercial bids for the project.

Commercial bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, known as the gas-sweetening project were first submitted to QP on 22 November 2009 (MEED 23:11:09).

However, QP asked for a fresh set of prices in 2010 as it moved to push down the cost of the project. France’s Technip initially emerged as the frontrunner to win the contract following the submission of amended prices on 14 February.

The scheme includes the construction of a 750 million-cubic-feet-day (cf/d) acid-gas removal unit and amine-sweetening plant at Mesaieed. QP already has two operational units at the North field processing plant in Mesaieed. The gas from the plant will primarily be used as feedstock for petrochemicals plant planned for Mesaieed.

Australia’s WorleyParsons won the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for the Mesaieed segment in 2007.

A second acid-gas removal unit will be built unit at the onshore Dukhan field, with the capacity to process 450 million cf/d of gas from the Khuff reservoir, which is part of the field.

The Dukhan field contains three oil reservoirs, and a fourth non-associated gas reservoir. The Khuff reservoir is one of four sour-gas sources supplying Qatar’s industrial consumers. The plants will remove sulphur from the gas to meet environmental regulations and industrial gas specifications on sulphur content of 4-25 parts per million to reduce emissions.

Technip carried out the $6.7m FEED contract in 2008 at Dukhan.

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