Background

The North Field lies off the north-east shore of the Qatar peninsula and covers an area of more than 6,000 square kilometres, equivalent to about half the land area of the State of Qatar.

In 1971, when exploration engineers discovered natural gas off Qatar's northeast coast, no one knew quite how important the find was. only after 15 appraisal wells had been drilled over a period of 14 years was it established that Qatar's North Field was the largest non-associated natural gas field in the world, with recoverable reserves of more than 900 trillion standard cubic feet (tscf), or approximately 10% of the world's known reserves.

In March Qatargas selected Japanese firm Chiyoda Corp. to carry out FEED work for a total of three new 7.8 million tons per annum (mtpa) onshore LNG production trains. The new onshore facilities will receive about 4.6 cubic feet per day of feedstock.

In addition, Qatar Petroleum recently announced it awarded a detailed design contract to U.S. Engineering firm McDermott International Inc. for offshore jackets for the new North Field Expansion project.

Operator: Qatar Petroleum

Expansion Capacity: 4 billion cubic metres per day of gas

Scope of Work

The design of these offshore jackets for the new North Field expansion project is an important step towards awarding the procurement, fabrication and installation contract by the end of 2018, which will lead the way to start the 2019 drilling campaign.

The North Field Expansion projects work scope consists of six wellhead jackets, each likely to weight upwards of 1500 tonnes. Whilst work on the offshore jackets has been offered first, a separate tender process is expected to be offered and carried out at a later stage. Several key contractors are thought to be invited by Qatargas. The contractors include McDermott, Saipem, Sapura Energy, TechnipFMC, Subsea 7 and Larsen & Toubro.