BP awards Subsea 7 contract extension

Contracts, Tenders and Rates - March 23, 2006

Subsea 7 has been awarded a contract extension valued in excess of US$160 million by BP Exploration Operating Co Ltd for subsea construction services.

The contract, which was announced in January 2006, has been extended from the current two year term to five years and will now run through until 31 December 2011.

The contract is for provision of a deepwater construction vessel with its in-house designed and built Hercules deepwater work class ROV systems.

The vessel will be permanently employed in a programme of work, supporting the development and maintenance of BP’s deepwater West of Shetland oil and gas fields, and will undertake a wide variety of construction tasks as well as inspection, repair and maintenance (IRM) activities.

The offshore programme is supported by a dedicated onshore project management and project engineering team with added specialist knowledge of remote intervention activities in harsh environmental areas.

Although, the primary scope will be for work in the West of Shetland basin on the Schiehallion and Foinaven fields, the vessel may be deployed to other BP assets and fields as may be required from time to time.

At water depths reaching 500m, the Schiehallion and Foinaven developments are the deepest oil and gas producing fields in the UK continental shelf to date, and with their prevailing environmental conditions present a challenging frontier for performing remote intervention construction and IRM activities.

Subsea 7 has been performing construction and IRM activities for BP in the West of Shetland basin since the initial development of the Foinaven field in the early 1990s. Over 100 Subsea 7 personnel both onshore and offshore will be employed in the provision of these services for BP.