Saipem has been awarded new offshore contracts worth over 1 billion euro. The contracts refer to activities to be carried out between 2010 and 2012 in the main offshore areas where Saipem is present, in particular in the Caspian Sea, both in the Kazakh and Azeri sectors, Brazil, the Middle East, West Africa, the North Sea and Mexico. The operations will be performed by Saipem’s most powerful fleet vessels and include the laying of sealines, field development, as well as platform fabrication and installation.
Among the major awarded contracts, in Kazakhstan, Saipem has signed an extension of the ‘Kashagan Trunklines’ contract with Agip KCO for the installation of the pipeline system connecting the offshore production facilities. This will be conducted as part of the experimental phase of the Kashagan field development programme and is located in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, approximately 80 km south-east of the town of Atyrau.
The contract has been extended to December 2011 and encompasses the engineering, procurement, fabrication and installation of the production and service pipelines – for a total length of approximately 34 kilometres – and of the associated umbilicals and power and fibre optic cables – for a total length of approximately 40 kilometres. The project also encompasses the design and installation of pre-investment pipeline stubs for a total length of approximately 5.2km, which will allow the implementation of future field development phases without need of production shutdowns.
The offshore activities will be executed by the vessels Castoro 12 and Castoro 16, having onboard special trenching and backfilling equipment developed for the purpose of tackling the challenging environmental conditions of the northern part of the Caspian Sea: very shallow water, severe weather and stringent environment conservation restrictions.
In Brazil, the Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, has awarded Saipem the EPIC contract for the P55-SCR project, for risers and flowlines serving the semisubmersible platform P-55 to be installed in the Roncador field, in the Campos Basin, about 120 kilometres off the coast of the Rio de Janeiro State in Brazil.
The contract encompasses the engineering, procurement, transportation and offshore installation of 25 kilometres of flowlines and of 16 steel catenary risers, with a diameter ranging from 8 to 12 inches for a total length of approximately 50 kilometres of rigid pipe. These will connect the subsea wellheads to the production platform P-55, in water depths ranging from 1,500 to 1,900 metres. Roncador is one of the most similar fields, in terms of water depth and geological characteristics, to the new recent discoveries in the Santos Basin, in the Brazilian offshore. Because of the size of the field, the water depth and the product specification, Roncador is considered one of the most technically challenging deepwater developments to date.
The offshore activities will be performed in the second half of 2012.