Petrofac Wins $600 Million Contract for Gas-Sweetening Facilities from Qatar Petroleum

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Facilities solutions provider Petrofac Limited (LSE:PFC) (Petrofac) (Jersey, United Kingdom) has been awarded a contract worth more than $600 million to provide gas-sweetening facilities to the state-owned Qatar Petroleum (Doha, Qatar) at Mesaieed Industrial City and Dukhan Petroleum City.

Under the terms of the contract, Petrofac will be responsible for the engineering, procurement and installation, as well as the commissioning, for gas-sweetening facilities at both Mesaieed and Dukhan. Work is expected to begin soon, and is scheduled to be completed in 38 months.

Qatar Petroleum previously had delayed the deadline for bids twice, saying that the company needed more time for its in-house team to complete the front-end engineering and design stage of the project. Among the companies that submitted technical bids for the project were the French Technip S.A. (EPA:TEC) (Paris, France) and the Italian Saipem SpA (BIT:SPM) (Milan, Italy).

The Qatar Petroleum and Gas complex at Mesaieed Industrial City, some 40 kilometers south of Doha, comprises three major plants, and natural gas liquid (NGL) plants 1, 2, 3 and 4. While NGL plants 1 and 2 are designed to produce a number of fractionated products from various areas within the complex, Petrofac will construct a sulfur recovery upgrade at the NGL 3 plant, which comprises separate units to treat gas as well as condensates. NGL plant 4 was established to develop Qatar Petroleum's gas treatment capacity.

Dukhan Petroleum City was established to develop Qatar Petroleum's Dukhan Field reserve and includes the Arab-D project, which has been designed to increase the production of gas, some of which will be supplied to the NGL plant 4 at Mesaieed, and some of which will be injected into oil wells nearing the end of production to increase flow rates. Under the new contract, Petrofac will supply an acid gas-recovery plant for the Arab-D project.

Petrofac has been active in the Middle East region for many years, and earlier this year was awarded a three-year consultancy contract from Qatar Petroleum to perform feasibility studies for a range of projects, in particular for oil and gas processing facilities, both onshore and offshore.

In 2005, the company was awarded a $240 million contract for the engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and one-year initial operations of the Kauther gas plant by Petroleum Development of Oman (PDO) (Muscat, Oman). The plant has a design capability of processing up to 20 million cubic meters per day of wet gas.

PDO is owned 60% by the government of Oman; 34% by Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (The Hague, Netherlands); 4% by Total S.A. (NYSE:TOT) (Courbevoie, France); and 2% by Partex Oil and Gas Holdings, which in turn is fully owned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal).

In 2007, Petrofac was awarded a service contract to take over the responsibility of two super-complexes, each of which consists of a large cluster of platforms, for Dubai Petroleum (Dubai, United Arab Emirates).

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