Big subsea win for GE VetcoGray bagging Chevron Gorgon
The Gorgon Project includes the subsea development of the Greater Gorgon natural gas fields, located about 130 kilometers (km) off the north-west coast of Western Australia and that have water depths of 200-to-1,300 meters and lie between 65 and 134 km from Barrow Island. The fields will be linked to a three train, 15 million tons-per-year LNG facility, with provision for domestic gas production on Barrow Island. Chevron Australia Pty Ltd of Perth is 50% owner and operator of the Gorgon Project in a joint venture with the Australian subsidiaries of ExxonMobil and Shell.
VetcoGray is a leader in the supply of long offset subsea control systems to facilitate subsea-to-beach field developments such as the Gorgon Project.
“We’re extremely pleased that Chevron has selected our technology, which has been proven in LNG applications worldwide, for this major Australian development,” said Dave Tucker, chief operating officer of VetcoGray. “The Gorgon Project offers a tremendous opportunity to expand our capabilities to support commercialization of the significant gas resources located offshore north Western Australia.”
The scope of VetcoGray’s contract includes the supply of manifolds, pipeline termination structures, pipeline end terminations, trees with subsea control modules, wellheads, production control systems, system integration testing, installation and operations support.
“Our capacity to provide a complete spectrum of reliable equipment and services was key to winning the award,” noted Tucker.
The VetcoGray project team will be based in Perth while engineering of the highly specialized subsea systems will be carried out at VetcoGray’s centers of excellence located in Aberdeen and Nailsea (UK); Houston (USA); Billingstad (Norway); and Singapore. Manufacturing and sourcing will also take place across several international locations, including potentially Australia. The schedule for the supply and delivery of the equipment is to be developed.
“We look forward to establishing a dedicated local facility to help expand our service capabilities in support of the installation and commissioning of the Gorgon Project, as well as for providing enhanced field support to our installed base in the region,” Tucker said.
While the Gorgon Project is the largest for VetcoGray to date in Australia, the company has previously supplied equipment for the Blackback, Stybarrow and Montara projects in the region. In addition, VetcoGray has worked with Chevron on several other projects worldwide, the most recent being the Tombua Landana and Lobito Tomboco projects in Angola.
