McDermott and Baker Hughes complete subsea project offshore Australia to keep Asia-Pacific LNG flowing
McDermott, the US engineering and construction company, and energy and LNG technology company Baker Hughes, have completed the installation of subsea infrastructure at the Ichthys gas field in northern Australia linked to the liquefaction plant operated by Japan’s Inpex Corp.
The contract was awarded to a McDermott and Baker Hughes consortium in 2019 by Inpex, the operator of the Ichthys project at Badin Point near Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Ichthys LNG has as additional shareholders French major TotalEnergies and the Australian subsidiaries of CPC Corp. of Taiwan, and Japanese utilities an importers Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric Power, JERA and Toho Gas.
Key LNG producer
Ichthys LNG has nameplate capacity of 9.3 million tonnes per annum LNG and 1.65 million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas per annum along with more than 100,000 barrels of condensate per day at peak output.
The McDermott-Baker Hughes subsea infrastructure development project included engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) of umbilicals, risers and flowlines (URF), a subsea production system comprised of a new 7-inch (approximately 18 centimetres) vertical Ichthys LNG planthristmas tree (VXT) system.
McDermotts said this is all part of forming a subsea well gathering system (GS4) tied back to the existing the “Ichthys Explorer “central processing facility.
The consortium’s scope of work also included an in-fill URF EPCI involving the development of new subsea wells tied-in to the existing gathering systems.
“The McDermott and Baker Hughes partnership has been marked by resilience and adaptability, guided by our firm commitment to deliver for the INPEX-operated Ichthys LNG and Australia,” said Mahesh Swaminathan, McDermott’s Senior Vice President, Subsea and Floating Facilities.
Engineering capabilities
“Together, leveraging McDermott’s unique end-to-end EPCI capabilities and Baker Hughes’s subsea development solutions, we navigated project complexities and overcame the unique challenges posed by the pandemic,” Swaminathan explained.
“Our hard work paid off, and I would like to thank our teams in Perth (Australia), Batam (Indonesia), and beyond, whose collective efforts enabled the safe completion of this important work scope,” Swaminathan added.
Romain Chambault, Baker Hughes Senior Vice President, Subsea Projects and Services, said the completion was achieved through the successful partnership between Baker Hughes and McDermott to execute the project for Inpex.
“The amount of collaboration shown between the consortium has been truly unique and serves as an industry benchmark for the successful execution of large, complex EPCI subsea projects,” Chambault stated.
