McDermott awarded contract to help expand Qatar LNG production

MCDERMOTT has been awarded a contract to provide topsides and pipelines that will help significantly increase LNG output in Qatar.

The contractor will provide engineering, procurement, construction and installation of eight wellhead topsides, and 500 km of subsea pipelines for QatarEnergy’s North Field East (NFE) development. It also has an option to provide a further five wellhead topsides for the North Field South (NFS) project.

The NFE development will supply feed gas into four new LNG trains currently under construction. Together with the NFS infrastructure which will supply feed gas to a further two planned LNG trains, the projects would see Qatar boost LNG output from 77m t/y to 126m t/y.

Demand for natural gas has risen as economies shift to cleaner forms of fossil fuels and bounce back from the earliest stages of the pandemic. A report on natural gas markets published last month by the Brookings Institute warned that gas markets are in crises with market volatility impacted by Asia and Europe competing for LNG and coal decreasing as a buffer for gas demand.

Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s Minister for Energy Affairs and CEO of QatarEnergy, said: “The award of this major EPCI contract is a momentous milestone that demonstrates QatarEnergy’s commitment to delivering our LNG expansion projects on time and to ensure the significant additional global LNG demand is catered for in a timely manner.”

McDermott says its contract is one of the largest it has ever been awarded but has not disclosed the value.