Azernews.Az

BAKU - The BP-operated consortium Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) on Friday announced the award of six key contracts totaling some $814 million for the development of the Chirag Oil Project (COP) as part of developing the major Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli fields in the Caspian Sea.
The Chirag Oil Project is a $6bn development and is planned to increase oil production and recovery of an additional 360 million barrels of oil from the ACG field through a new offshore facility to be installed between Deepwater Gunashli and Chirag platforms.
The award of these key contracts follows the sanctioning in March by the ACG Steering Committee of the COP project, the AIOC told AssA-Irada.
AIOC’s extensive bidding and negotiation process spanned some eighteen months and was based on the experience gained from the previous ACG development projects.
One of the awarded COP contracts was signed with BOS Shelf, which is a joint venture between a Saipem Group entity and Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR’s Baku Deepwater Jacket Factory (BDJF) named after Heydar Aliyev. It covers fabrication of the jacket and subsea template with associated pin piles and a riser support frame for the brownfield work on the Deepwater Gunashli production, compression, water injection and utilities platform (PCWU) platform at the BDJF facility in Baku with an overall value of about $215 million.
The AMEC/Tekfen/Azfen (ATA) Consortium will carry out the fabrication, assembly, hook-up and commissioning of the PDQ integrated deck, including the drilling facilities, at the Azfen fabrication facility in Baku with a value of some $340 million.
Malaysia’s Saipem Asia Sdn Bhd was awarded a contract for the transportation and installation of the subsea template with a value of approximately $57 million. SOCAR's heavy lift vessel Derrick Barge Azerbaijan (DBA) will be utilized for this work.
The $22 million contract with Apply Leirvik Emtunga, a Norwegian-Swedish company, covers the engineering, procurement and construction of the living quarters. Engineering work will commence this year with shipping of the living quarters from Sweden expected to commence in the third quarter of 2011. The assembly and commissioning of the living quarters will be performed at the Azfen fabrication facility in Baku.
Kellogg Brown & Root, a US-UK company, was awarded a contract worth some $150m for the engineering of the offshore facilities. After completion of engineering, work will continue through on site assistance in Baku.
The contract worth about $30m with KCA Deutag, a US-UK company, envisions engineering of the drilling facilities. After completion of engineering, work will continue through on site assistance in Baku.
The AIOC says these awards "maintain its commitment to optimize the use of Azerbaijan’s local resources". The project is expected to consume around 9 million manhours during construction work with 90% of this work being undertaken in Azerbaijan and of this, around 80% will be carried out by local workforce. Additionally, the contractors are encouraged to make maximum use of local subcontractors.
For the first time in history of the ACG development COP will utilize local resources to the greatest possible extent and all fabrication works will be done in Azerbaijan.
Further key contracts are currently being finalized.
ACG participating interests are: BP (operator – 34.1%), Chevron (10.2%), SOCAR (10%), INPEX (10%), Statoil (8.6%), ExxonMobil (8%), TPAO (6.8%), Devon (5.6%), ITOCHU (3.9%), Hess (2.7%).*