Rolls Royce Adds $40/300 Million Service Deal to $107 Million Dolphin Compressor Contract

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Rolls Royce (RR) has added a $40 million long-term service agreement (LTSA) to the $107 million order it received at the beginning of the year for six Trent-powered compressor sets for Qatar's Dolphin Gas Project.

The service agreement runs for an initial six-year $40 million stage, with the option to renew for four additional six-year terms, which could be worth a total of $300 million over a full 30 year span. The Trent Dry Low Emission (DLE) packages are a key component of the $3.5 billion Dolphin project. The compressor units will be positioned at Ras Laffan, Qatar, at the entry point of the 400-kilometer pipeline connecting UAE nations with Qatar and Oman. The industrial Trent packages will drive natural gas compressors to provide front-end boosting for the underwater pipeline carrying dry gas supplies from Ras Laffan to Abu Dhabi. Each Trent package will drive a Dresser-Rand (NYSE:IR) (Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey) DATUM centrifugal gas compressor.

RR claims that the industrial Trent, based on the proven aircraft engine version, is the most advanced aero derivative industrial gas turbine available. The Dolphin project installation represents the first application of this Trent package in gas compression applications. The equipment will be packaged at the RR Mount Vernon, Ohio, facility in the USA for delivery between the second and third quarters of 2005.

Starting in 2006, two million cubic feet of natural gas per day will be supplied through the pipeline to the UAE in the initial phase in the project. Shareholders in the project are the government of Abu Dhabi, 51%; Total (PARIS:TOT) (Paris, France), 24.5%; and Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) (Los Angeles, California), 24.5%.

Tom Curley, president of the RR energy business, said that the LTSAs create partnerships designed to control the operator's maintenance budget and free them from risk and responsibility. RR claims to maintain a degree of availability, which is industry-leading, by installing health monitoring systems on each of the units thus giving operators access to technical support 24 hours a day.

The Trent engine is designed to meet stringent environmental requirements. The use of an eight canular-staged combustion system allows the successful operation of the engine in part load operation, while still maintaining NOx and CO compliance. The Trent 50 model is designed to produce 52MW of power at ISO conditions and is flat rated at 58 MW at temperatures below the 2C mark. RR has a total of 54,000 gas turbines, of all types, in service worldwide.