From Australia (LB): Civmec can add additional Prelude (32/16) work to its order book after it was awarded a contract from Technip for the Shell-operated floating LNG (FLNG) project.

Under the contract, Singapore-listed Civmec will undertake the fabrication of 17 subsea jumper spools and associated lifting equipment for the world’s first FLNG project, located 475 km north-northeast of Broome in Western Australia.

Civmec said it gained valuable experience through the delivery of spools for another Technip subsea project and would start work immediately.

The Prelude contract comes in addition to other new work the service provider has gained for a value of about $45 million. The contracts include packages on the South Hedland power station and Alcoa’s Kwinana filtration plant.

The Prelude win adds to the list of contracts Civmec already has secured on the project and delivered by the oil and gas division.

In 2014, Civmec was awarded a master service order contract for the fabrication and testing of subsea components for Prelude.

Civmec’s scope of work included the manufacture of eight pipeline end terminations, associated buckle triggers and suction piles.

Civmec has delivered contracts on four of Australia’s LNG projects, comprising Prelude, the Inpex-operated Ichthys (32/16) project and Chevron’s Wheatstone (32/11) and Gorgon (32/16) project.

Singapore’s Sembcorp Marine has landed a contract to design and build a new floating, storage and offloading (FSO) vessel for MODEC. The vessel will be deployed at Maersk Oil’s U.K. North Sea Culzean (32/16) Field.

Scheduled for delivery in first-quarter 2018, the FSO unit will be Sembcorp’s first FSO newbuilding secured on a full turnkey project basis including engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning.

MODEC will supply the internal turret and topside modules (vapour recovery unit and metering skid), which Sembcorp will install and integrate.

From Houston (BN): In the Gulf of Mexico, Shell said the FPSO vessel for its Stones (32/14) project—dubbed Turritella—has set sail from the Singapore shipyard where it was retrofitted.

It will be installed in the northeast corner of Walker Ridge Block 551, where work has been underway for months on subsea infrastructure.

Planned production in almost 2,900 m will set a record for water depth. First oil is still targeted for early 2016.

The converted Suezmax is equipped with a disconnectible turret so the vessel can weathervane and move if a hurricane threatens the 60-Mbbl/d, 0.42-MMcm/d facility.

It is the first such turret producing through steel lazy wave risers. The vessel can store up to 800 Mbbl for offloading and transshipment ashore.

In related news, SBM, which agreed in 2013 to refit, lease and operate the vessel for Shell, announced it has sold interests in the venture to Mitsubishi Corp. (30%) and NYK Line (15%).

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) completed its investigation of a fire on the Petrojarl Knarr FPSO vessel on March 24.

A fire broke out in the ventilation system on the Knarr (32/8) Field FPSO unit. The unit concerned supplied air to the engine room beneath the living quarters.

This event had been preceded by a power cut, which shut down the fans in the HVAC unit. However, steam continued to be supplied to its heat exchanger. That caused high temperatures to develop in the unit, and air filter cassettes ignited 8 hours later, the PSA said.

Technical investigations by the vessel’s owner have been unable to identify the direct cause of the filter ignition with any certainty. Had the fire damper valves failed to operate, smoke could have spread into the living quarters.

The incident led only to material damage. The fire was extinguished after about 30 minutes.

A number of nonconformities and improvement items have been identified by the PSA’s investigation.