LNG

KBR, the US energy and civil engineering company, has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction management contract by Australia’s Woodside Energy for the Pluto LNG project in Western Australia.

The task of KBR will be to undertake modifications to Train 1 of Woodside's Pluto liquefaction facility.

The Houston-based company explained that modifications will enable the processing of up to three million tonnes per annum of offshore Scarborough gas field through Train 1, while Pluto Train 2 is built in a separate project.

“KBR is pleased to support Woodside in the modification of the Pluto Train 1 LNG facility to enable processing of Scarborough gas, and in turn provide opportunity to extend the life of the plant,” said Jay Ibrahim, President at KBR of Sustainable Technology Solutions.

More jobs

“We are also excited to focus on engaging local and Indigenous businesses to support the project and proud to be creating jobs and opportunities within Western Australia,” Ibrahim stated.

KBR has nearly 50 years of experience in designing, developing and supporting LNG facilities. The company has overhauled existing liquefaction Trains at LNG plants worldwide.

The Pluto LNG onshore processing facility is located near Karratha in the northwest of Western Australia and the first cargo from the single-Train facility was delivered in 2012.

Woodside’s Pluto feed-gas supplies come from the Pluto and Xena gas fields. However, the additional Scarborough field will provide Train 1 with a longer lifespan as well as enabling the building of second liquefaction Train at the Pluto facility.

The second Train will have 5 million tonnes per annum of output and take total nameplate capacity of both Trains to at least 8.2 MTPA.

The Scarborough field is located about 375 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia and is estimated to contain 11.1 trillion cubic feet of dry gas.

Development of Scarborough includes the installation of a floating production unit (FPU) with eight wells drilled in the initial phase and 13 wells drilled over the life of the Scarborough field.

Equity sale

Woodside announced in August 2023 that it was selling equity in the Scarborough joint venture to LNG Japan Corp.

The Japanese company will also import LNG from the Scarborough volumes and collaborate in new energy opportunities. 

A sale and purchase agreement was signed with the LNG Japan entity for the sale of a 10 percent non-operating participating interest in the joint venture for $500 million, subject to adjustments. 

The Japanese venture will additionally reimburse Woodside for its share of expenditure for the Scarborough project, effective from 1st January, 2022.

LNG Japan is a 50-50 joint venture between Sumitomo Corp and Sojitz Corp., two of Japan’s seven largest general trading companies who are known in Japanese as the “sogo shosha”.

McDermott International of the US was awarded the main engineering contract from Australian LNG plant operator Santos for the offshore Bayu-Undan infill well that serves the Darwin liquefaction export plant in the Northern Territory.

McDermott said the contract is for subsea, engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) work for the Phase 3C project in the Timor Sea, located about 310 miles (500 kilometres) off the northwest coast of Darwin and 124 miles (200km) off the southeast coast of Timor-Leste.

“McDermott has a strong track record of delivering complex subsea projects in the Asia Pacific,” said Mahesh Swaminathan, McDermott's Senior Vice President for the region.

“We will continue that tradition as we demonstrate our execution expertise and safety excellence throughout this project,” added Swaminathan.

The Bayu-Undan field is one of Timor-Leste's largest gas fields and Santos become operator in May 2020 after buying out the stake of US major ConocoPhillips.

Preliminary work on the Phase 3C project commenced in May 2021 and the scope will be managed by McDermott's office in Perth, Western Australia.

“The McDermott scope involves a tieback of a single in-field well to existing facilities re-using existing flexible flowline with a new umbilical and certain infrastructure,” explained the Houston, Texas-based company.

Santos, as operator of the Bayu-Undan Joint Venture, has already started the new infill drilling programme in the field in the waters of Timor-Leste.

The programme was given a final investment decision in January 2021 and comprises three production wells for additional natural gas and liquids reserves, extending field life as well as production from the offshore facilities and the Darwin liquefaction plant.

The Adelaide-based company said the wells would be drilled using the “Noble Tom Prosser” jack-up rig, with first production expected in the third quarter of 2021.

Santos believes the infill drilling programme will add over 20 million barrels of oil equivalent gross reserves and production at a low cost of supply and importantly extend the life of Bayu-Undan and the jobs and investment that rely on it.

Santos noted that more than 400 Timorese are currently working on Bayu-Undan activities and this will make an important economic contribution to Timor-Leste.

The President of the Timor-Leste National Petroleum and Minerals Authority, Florentino Soares Ferreira, has said the Santos-led venture was important in the history of Timor-Leste.

“It will mark the first drilling campaign in the Bayu-Undan field as Timor-Leste offshore waters, following ratification of the Maritime Boundary Treaty (MBT) between Timor-Leste and Australia,” stated Soares Ferreira.

Santos as operator has a 43.4 percent stake in Bayu-Undan. The remaining stakes are held by South Korea’s SK E&S (25 percent), Inpex Corp. of Japan (11.4 percent), Italy’s Eni (11 percent), while Japanese utilities JERA Co. Inc. and Tokyo Gas own 6.1 percent and 3.1 percent respectively.

The Philippines LNG project at Batangas Bay on the Filipino main island of Luzon has awarded construction and storage tank contracts to the world’s oldest tank erector, Chicago Bridge and Iron (CB&I).

The US Golden Pass LNG export project on the Gulf Coast, owned by Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, is requesting authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin the work covered in the latest part of its Implementation Plan and including the foundations of the first liquefaction Train by mid-October 2020.

The FERC formally approved the transformation of the Golden Pass import terminal located on the Sabine-Neches Waterway in Texas into an export plant in December 2016.

The Qatar-ExxonMobil project is building three liquefaction Trains with around 16 million tonnes per annum of output.

The first Train is still scheduled to come on stream in 2024, with Train 2 expected to follow six-to-eight months later, and Train 3 six-to-eight months after that.

Golden Pass has continued to progress its site development activities since 2019 and has now submitted the next chapter of the Implementation Plan to expand work at the site.

The project’s engineering, procurement and construction contractor is a joint venture comprising Chiyoda Corp. of Japan and US companies McDermott International and Zachry Group.

The EPC companies have been making sure that local businesses received priority consideration for work and has awarded 34 local sub-contracts since actual construction began in May 2020.

The part of the Implementation Plan referred to in the latest FERC filing includes the installation of the foundations in the LNG Train 1 Area.

“While Southeast Texas perseveres through the Covid-19 crisis, many companies and residents are getting a boost from opportunity brought to the area by the Golden Pass LNG export project,” the developers have said.

The EPC contractors said they had already committed over $245 million to local businesses so far, and more than 650 local residents were working on the construction site as of the start of August 2020.

The companies noted that the schedule for the Golden Pass Project remains the same as the schedule that was provided in the Implementation Plan.

Part of the latest information exchange with the FERC covered the foundation calculations for the steel piperack (Pipe Bridge) in Train 1

“Golden Pass shall file with the Secretary the following information, stamped and sealed by the professional engineer-of-record in the state of Texas: a. site preparation drawings and specifications; b. LNG liquefaction facility structures and foundation design drawings and calculations (including prefabricated and field constructed structures); c. seismic specifications for procured equipment; and d. quality control procedures to be used for civil-structural design and construction,” it explained to the FERC.

Golden Pass requested that the information in this part of the plan (Volume II) be treated as “privileged and confidential”, and that it not be released to the public.

“This information contains proprietary information that is customarily treated as privileged and confidential and disclosure of this information could result in commercial and competitive harm to Golden Pass,” the developers told the FERC.

Qatar Petroleum owns 70 percent of the project and 30 percent is held by ExxonMobil.

The US major is also Qatar’s main partner in the existing Trains in Qatar itself which produce 77 MTPA and will be expanded to 110 MTPA.

ExxonMobil has said that the Golden Pass project is building on the other successful international relationship between the two in exploration and development activities in nations such as Argentina, Brazil and Mozambique.