A consortium of local National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) and France’s Technip has won the $485m engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to develop Abu Dhabi’s Satah offshore field.

Zakum Development Company (Zadco) has sent the consortium a letter of intent (LoI) after the consortium submitted the lowest bid for the project earlier this year (MEED 3:6:11)

The scheme will boost production at Satah to about 25,000 barrels a day (b/d) by using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods, with gas produced by Zadco re-injected into the field. The project includes onshore and offshore work, with the contractors to build pipelines, upgrading platforms and building gas and water processing facilities.

NPCC/Technip’s bid was significantly lower than the closest rival bid, believed to have been in the region of $550m. The other companies that submitted commercial bids were Larsen & Toubro (India), McDermott (US), Saipem (Italy), and a consortium of Petrofac (UK) and Swiber (Singapore).

The scope of the contract encompasses the construction of processing facilities that separate crude from associate water. The consortium will also build gas processing facilities on nearby Zirku Island, linked to Satah via pipeline. The facilities include gas-injection compressors and flare gas recovery units. The contract also stipulates laying a series of underwater pipelines and upgrading the offshore platforms.

Dutch engineering firm Tebodin and UK-based Mott MacDonald have been tasked with the requisite front-end engineering and design work. Britain’s Penspen are project managers for the EPC stage. A contract worth $34m for a produced water treatment plant has already been issued to Oman’s Galfar Engineering & Contracting.

Satah, 200 kilometres northwest of Abu Dhabi, is one Zadco’s third offshore field after Upper Zakum and the smaller Umm al-Dalkh reservoir. As part of the company’s plans to boost production to more than 800,000 b/d by 2015, Zadco is also tendering an EPC contract on Upper Zakum, which will raise production there to 750,000 b/d.