French firm to show expertise on development projects

World Oil, April, 2002

Offering a full range of engineering services and turnkey abilities, France's Bouygues Offshore was recently contracted to handle part or all of two significant field development projects. First is the landmark, $3.5-billion Dolphin project that will supply natural gas from Qatar's offshore North field to Abu Dhabi and Dubai (see map).

Last December, a joint venture of Bouygues' subsidiary, Sofresid, and U.S.-based Foster Wheeler was awarded a $10-million contract by Dolphin Energy Ltd. (DEL) for the front-end engineering and design (FEED) of the project's upstream facilities. DEL is a consortium between UOG (United Arab Emirates Offset Group, 75%) and TotalFinaElf (25%).

The FEED contract covers two offshore production platforms; two subsea pipelines from the platforms to the port of Ras Laffan; an onshore gas processing facility at Ras Laffan; a gas compression facility at Ras Laffan; two gas receiving and metering stations; and telecommunications and control systems.

Sofresid is carrying out the engineering for this project at its offices in La Defense (Paris), France, over a period of eight months. As noted by Bouygues Offshore Chairman Herve Le Bouc, this contract strengthens his firm's commitment to playing a major role in development projects in the high-potential Middle East area.

Meanwhile, the company in partnership with Italy's Saipem was also awarded a $257-million turnkey contract for development of Algeria's Ouled Dejmma oil field. The contract was awarded after a public bidding process by the Sonatrach/ BHP Billiton partnership on behalf of Sonatrach, BHP Billiton and Agip. It covers Rhourde Ouled Dejmma and five satellite fields, all located in Berkine basin, east of Hassi Messaoud.

This contract covers engineering, procurement and construction of facilities to gather oil produced from the six fields and process up to 80,000 bpd. These facilities will also compress gas output for reinjection into the reservoirs, inject water to maintain reservoir pressure and store output before shipment.

All work will be completed within two years. This is the third major contract for Bouygues Offshore within Algeria.