KBR Inc. (NYSE: KBR) said on Jan. 16 that its joint venture (JV) with SOCAR has been awarded two separate front-end engineering design (FEED) contracts for a new production, drilling, quarters platform.

The Azeri Central East platform will be located in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.

The contracts cover the provision of FEED services for the new platform, along with associated brownfield tie-ins to other existing platforms in the ACG field, and a separate contract for the subsea services FEED.

Following previous awards to other regional and international clients, these contracts mark the fourth and fifth awards to the JV, SOCAR-KBR Ltd. Liability Co. (SOCAR-KBR), since its inception in mid-2015. SOCAR-KBR was formed to help further Azerbaijan's ambition for creating a world-class Azerbaijan based engineering company.

“Through the Azerbaijani engineering company, SOCAR-KBR we are partnering KBR’s proven tools, systems, and procedures and our project track record in the Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia [AGT] region with SOCAR’s operation knowledge and experience in the oil and gas sector,” Jay Ibrahim, president, EMEA, said.

“KBR has been working in the AGT region since 1993 which gives us unrivalled experience and knowledge of existing on and offshore Greenfield and Brownfield assets. During that time, KBR has completed over 25 million man-hours of work with zero lost time incidents.”

“These projects will be led by the Caspian engineering team in London with maximum local execution support from the Baku office where local engineers are delivering various projects under the SOCAR-KBR umbrella,” Ibrahim added. “We are proud that currently more than 75% of our Baku based SOCAR-KBR team are Azerbaijani engineers.”

The value of the contract was booked into the backlog of unfilled orders for KBR’s Engineering & Construction business segment in fourth-quarter of 2017.

Offshore