Bussiness News

Apache, one of Australia's most active offshore oil & gas explorers, owns a 65% operating interest in the Julimar Development Project, with KUFPEC (Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company) owning the remaining 35%. The development consists of three gas-condensate fields, Julimar, Brunello and Grange, which lie 80 km NNW off Varanus Island in water depths of up to 250m. The subsea FEED contract includes up to 18 subsea wells plus subsea completions, tied back to the Wheatstone Central Processing Platform. The combined estimated reserves of the three fields are estimated to contain 2.1 trillion cubic feet of gas and will eventually be developed as feedstock for the Chevron-led Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.

The subsea FEED contract will require over 25,000 man-hours of input and will produce defined solutions for the subsea systems and the 90km of flowlines.

Gerwyn Williams, group managing director, J P Kenny said, "We are delighted to be engineering our fifth successive $multi-billion subsea and pipeline project on the North West Shelf which reinforces our position as the world's leading subsea and pipeline company. Our track record on projects such as Ichthys' LNG development and Woodside's Pluto project has been to create savings of hundreds of millions of dollars, and we are delighted Apache wants to utilise that expertise."

Phil Brown, operations director of J P Kenny in Perth, added, "The combined engineering strengths of all the Wood Group Kenny companies will enable us to devise the best innovative engineering solutions for this project."

The first phase of the Julimar Development Project is expected to be completed by October 2010, with the second FEED phase completing in June 2011.