Italy’s engineering, drilling, and construction services giant Saipem is on a roll, as it lined up its second batch of contracts in two days and its third one since the start of this month. The latest set of deals was secured with two oil majors. These assignments, awarded by Eni and BP, come with a total value of around $700 million.

Scarabeo 5 semi-submersible drilling rig; Source: Saipem

The Italian giant won the first contract with Eni Congo for the conversion of the Scarabeo 5 semi-submersible drilling rig into a separation and boosting plant – a floating production unit (FPU), which is a semi-submersible production platform that receives the production fluids from wellheads riser platforms, separates the gas from liquids and boosts the gas to feed the nearby floating LNG (FLNG) unit.

After an agreement signed early this year for the execution of preliminary engineering and procurement activities, the new contract entails the engineering, procurement, construction, transportation and commissioning of the FPU to be installed offshore the coast of the Republic of Congo, located northwest of the Djeno Terminal, in a depth of about 35 metres. The commissioning of offshore works and the start-up of the FPU are slated for 4Q 2025.

According to Saipem, this deal is part of Eni’s Congo LNG project, the country’s first natural gas liquefaction project that is expected to reach an overall LNG production capacity of 3 million tons per year – approximately 4.5 billion cubic meters per year – from 2025. The Congo LNG project is expected to exploit the gas resources of the Marine XII project, fulfilling power generation needs while fuelling LNG exports and supplying new volumes of gas to international markets focusing on Europe.

The project entails the installation of two floating natural gas liquefaction plants at the Nenè and Litchendjili fields. The first FLNG plant, currently under conversion and with a capacity of 0.6 million tonnes per year, is expected to begin production in 2023, while the second FLNG plant, already under construction, is expected to become operative in 2025, with a capacity of 2.4 MTPA.

Source: offshore-energy