Contracts & Projects August 2012

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SNC-Lavalin has been awarded a $92m contract by Saudi Tabreed District Cooling Co., to provide district cooling facilities to the Jebel Omar Development in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It will be responsible for the design, procurement, construction and commissioning of a district cooling plant, with an ultimate capacity of 55,000 refrigeration tonnes (RT), 1.5 km of dual underground chilled water distribution pipeline and 10 energy transfer stations with a total capacity of 36,000 RT.

Amarinth has secured orders totalling $5.5 million from the National Petroleum Construction Co. (NPCC) in Abu Dhabi.The deals involve the supply of pumps into both offshore and onshore projects. These units will be used on two major projects. The first will see Amarinth supplying API 610 A series and C Series pumps to the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Co. (ADMA-OPCO). (Read more)

Jacobs Engineering Group has sold its iron ore pelletising intellectual property and other assets to Metso Corp.They groups had shared interests in the business, with Jacobs providing process engineering and Metso providing machine design.

Australia Pacific LNG has selected technology developed by Honeywell Process Solutions to deliver a data consolidation and reporting technology framework. The solution, built on Intuition Executive, will support the production, operations and asset management functions of its CSG to LNG Project. The upstream operator of the Australia Pacific LNG Project - is currently the largest producer of coal bed methane in Australia.

International System EST has selected Emerson Industrial Automation to supply control cabinets for a utilities upgrade project at SABIC’s Petrokemya Arabian Petrochemical site in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The order is for four large cabinets which will contain over 140 ASCO Numatics solenoid valves and a variety of other control equipment.

Global oil & gas and petrochemicals companies are to announce plans for major investmentsat a summit to promote UK business during the Olympics The projects include a £1.4-billion field development plan for the southern North Sea by a partnership involving GDF SUEZ, Centrica and Bayerngas, while Versalis is investing €50-60 million to expand elastomer production in Scotland. (Read more)

Camfil Farr APC, a maker of dust and fume collection equipment,is to open a new facility in the UK to serve industrial customers throughout the UK and Europe. Work is already underway for the new plant in Heywood, Greater Manchester, UK. The facility is expected to open in January 2013. When it is fully operational, Camfil Farr APC expects to employ more than 100 people in engineering, metal fabrication, welding and assembly positions.

Lorien Engineering Polska, the first overseas office of Burton on Trent,, UK-based Lorien Engineering Solutions, is relocating to new premises on the outskirts of Wroc?aw, south west Poland. The move is to enable it to service an increasing workload by doubling the number of professional engineering staff employed in Poland. Lorien Polska also serves as a regional hub for the engineering company’s operations in central and eastern Europe.

Redline Communications has shipped a $2m order for its industrial wireless system to a major oil and gas company. The system will provide communications between drilling rigs and the unnamed client’s centralised control offices. The rigs are in two oil fields, one in South Texas and another in North Dakota. Wireless devices mounted on towers and rigs deliver connectivity across hundreds of miles of terrain. A patent-pending Redline technology is said to allow uninterrupted wireless coverage even as the rigs are being relocated.

ABB has won an order for a three-year service agreement from Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer. ABB will maintain and optimise the installed gearless mill drive system and related equipment at Codelco’s Andina copper mine in northern Chile. The agreement with Codelco includes life cycle management, scheduled maintenance services, as well as remote diagnostic services for a gearless mill drive (GMD) system supplied by ABB in 2010.

In its Q2 results Fluor Corp. reported double-digit profit growth, with only its ‘power’ unit showing decline. Current quarter awards included $5.0bn in its ‘oil & gas’ segment, $1.1bn in ‘industrial & infrastructure’ and $769m in ‘government’. Consolidated backlog for Q2 were a record of $43bn, up $2.7bn from a year ago. CEO David Seaton also noted “substantial market opportunities globally, [including] a growing prospect list in the US relating to the availability of low cost shale gas.”

Atlas Copco AB has acquired Gazcon A/S, located in Denmark. The acquisition extends Atlas Copco’s offering of nitrogen generators and adds oxygen generators to the range.

Redhall Group plc has announced contracts in the UK for two business units. Redhall Engineering is to provide integrated, multi-discipline engineering services to Polimeri Europa UK Ltd, of Hythe, Hampshire. The contract is worth around £8m over a three-year period. National Nuclear Laboratory has awarded Redhall Nuclear a three-year multi-discipline framework agreement to provide support services nationally.

Alfa Laval has acquired Ashbrook Simon-Hartley, a supplier of belt filter presses, which, it said, will offer a complement and alternative to its decanter range in the dewatering of wastewater. ASH is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in the UK, Chile and Brazil. It has sales of around SEK500m and 250 employees.

Foster Wheeler CEO Kent Masters has reported the company’s adjusted Q2 net income at below the average quarter of 2011 due mainly to higher sales proposal costs and unfavorable utilisation rates. “These results are certainly not indicative of a quarterly run rate, and we continue to expect that 2012 earnings per share will be materially higher than 2011,” he said.

Penspen is to provide Siemens with engineering and procurement services for the balance of plant (BOP) on a new simple cycle power plant in southern Iraq. Siemens has agreed a base scope with the State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP) to work on the engineering and supply of the power plant. Siemens will provide the engineering and supply of the power island, and Penspen will provide the remaining engineering and supply of the BOP equipment/materials. Work is expected to go on until Q4/13.

Honeywell has been selected by Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname NV, the state-owned hydrocarbon and sustainable energy company, to upgrade the safety and control system at its Suriname refinery to its ‘integrated control and safety system’ (ICSS). The upgrade is part of the Suriname refinery expansion project, which will double the capacity and expand the range of products and fuels. The project is being managed by Saipem as main contractor.

Apprion has completed an expanded wireless system of tank gauge monitoring capabilities for Huntsman Corp.’s manufacturing facility in Port Neches, Texas.
The enhanced infrastructure at the facility includes the ION tank gauging application, additional Apprion IONizers and more wireless monitoring and safety devices throughout the facility. Apprion first deployed the industrial wireless infrastructure in 2009 as a part of Huntsman’s Project Zero safety plan to eliminate injuries, defects, and environmental releases at the facility.

ABB has reported higher orders and revenues in Q2/12, as customers in almost all regions invested in upgrades and productivity. Utilities continued to invest in transmission grids, while industrial customers, especially in oil and gas, increased spending to secure reliable power and improve productivity.

AMEC has won a three-year contract to provide waste treatment services to the Bohunice nuclear power plant in Slovakia. AMEC is to apply its specialist technology to retrieve and treat the 600 cubic metres of waste at the two VVER 440 reactors at the plant, which ceased operation in 2008 and 2010, respectively. The contract will be executed from AMEC’s Slovakian office in Trnava which has developed this new technology.

Atlas Copco Compressors has delivered a £6-million package comprising instrument and process air compressor modules to Kazakhstan. The four modules, which were custom-engineered at Atlas Copco’s systems division in Hemel Hempstead, were flown by Antonov 124 freight transporter to ensure the delivery schedule was met. (Read more)

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. is to provide professional technical services for Braskem at portions of the Marcus Hook Refinery it recently acquired, near Philadelphia, Pa. Braskem acquired propylene splitter assets at the 781-acre refinery complex in late June. Jacobs’ initial scope of work includes retrofitting the new acquisitions so Braskem can more efficiently process propylene for use in its adjacent polypropylene plant.

Aker Solutions is to supply Hyundai Heavy Industries with a complete drilling equipment topside package for a new semi-submersible drilling rig the South Korean yard is building for Seadrill, the rig operator. The work will be executed in Aker’s facilities in Kristiansand, Horten and Asker in Norway and Erkelenz, Germany. The rig is to be completed in Q4/14.

Global Process Systems, part of UAE-based Al-Jaber Group, is to supply three process packages to Malaysian oil & gas major SapuraKencana Petroleum. The three contracts, which are to be executed by GPS in Malaysia, are for the fuel gas conditioning package, the produced water treatment package and the deaerator column and vacuum pump skid destined for the Serendah Project in the South China Sea.

CB&I has won a $225m contract from AGL Energy Ltd for the EPC and commissioning work on the Newcastle gas storage facility project (NGSF) in New South Wales, Australia. The scope includes all the civil, structural, mechanical, piping, electrical, instrumentation and commissioning support for the construction of a LNG storage tank, gas pretreatment, the liquefaction, the vaporisation and utilities. Project completion is due in 2015.

PETRONAS has signed a heads of agreement with Italy-based Versalis SpA, part of Eni SpA, to jointly establish and operate elastomer plants within its’ proposed ‘refinery and petrochemical integrated development’ (RAPID) complex. The elastomer plants would be part of the world-scale facilities to be developed within the RM60-billion RAPID complex in Pengerang, Johor. (Read more)

PressureFab is investing £935k to upgrade its Dundee facility in Scotland, creating 25 jobs over the next two years. The upgrade is to meet future demands from the oil & gas and renewable energy sectors. This, it claims, will transform the facility into one of the UK’s most technologically advanced steel manufacturing and industrial coating units.

Negotiations with a number of companies, including Emerson, interested in a possible takeover of parts of Invensys plc have terminated, the UK group said recently. Invensys said it had been in “highly preliminary” talks with third parties - Emerson Electric Co. among them - but added that these discussions were no longer ongoing. There are, it added. no other discussions taking place in relation to an offer for the group.

A consortium including Bechtel has been awarded the EPC contract to build a natural gas-fueled, combined-cycle power plant for Panda Temple Power. Bechtel and Siemens will design and build the 758MW facility in Temple, Texas, south of Dallas. Bechtel will be responsible for the engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning of the facility. Siemens will provide the power-island package, including the natural gas and steam turbines and waste heat recovery boilers.

Oil and gas engineering group Penspen has signed a $1.2 million contract to develop high level integrity policies and procedures for Mexican state-owned oil and gas company PEMEX. Under the two-year contract, Penspen will help develop a plan for managing the integrity and reliability of transmission pipelines, gathering pipelines, onshore pipelines, offshore pipelines, storage terminals and maritime terminals. (Read more)

Aker Solutions has won a contract to deliver a deepwater drilling riser system to drilling operator Atwood Oceanics. The system, which will be manufactured at Aker’s plant in Port Klang, Malaysia, is to be delivered in the autumn of 2013. It employs its CLIP riser technology, which allows faster and safer connection and disconnection of riser joints.

Foster Wheeler has been awarded an EPCm contract by PDVSA Petróleo SA for the El Palito refinery expansion project in Venezuela. FW will execute the project in consortium with Toyo Engineering Corp. and Y & V Ingeniería y Construcción of Venezuela. The expansion, which will include a new 140k barrels per stream day (BPSD) crude/vacuum distillation unit, is to double the refinery’s capacity to 280,000 BPSD. It is due to be completed during 2016.

Konecranes UK’s industrial crane division is to supply two specialist waste handling cranes to operate at the new Suffolk 269ktpa facility at Great Blakenham near Ipswich and two similar cranes to the new Oxford County Council’s Efw site. The Suffolk site is being constructed by Lagan Construction with its joint venture partner CNIM of France. The Oxfordshire site is also being developed by CNIM with its JV partner Clugston Construction.

BASF is expanding and moderning its emissions catalysts production facility in Nienburg, Germany, due to increasing demand for automotive emissions-control systems. The bulk of the ‘double-digit million’ investment relates to expanding production lines for catalytic particle filters - catalysed soot filter, CSF - and selective catalytic reduction catalysts for diesel engines. State-of-the-art systems for coating and drying the catalysts will be procured, said BASF

Siemens Industry UK and Morgan Sindall Group plc are forming a ‘strategic technology and infrastructure partnership’. Siemens is to provide advice and guidance to MS on technical and technological aspects of projects delivered across its construction and regeneration business. MS is to “leverage advantages of scale, including life cycle cost benefits as well as commercial and technical benefits [via] the supply of Siemens products, services and solutions.”

INEOS Enterprises Ltd has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group a design and fabrication contract for two gas-gas heat exchangers to be installed in a sulfuric acid plant at its Runcorn, UK. INEOS selected Jacobs’ Chemetics radial flow gas-gas heat exchanger design as the most appropriate design and technical solution for the plant. The equipment is expected to be fabricated at Jacobs’ facility in Pickering, Ontario.

Valve gearboxes manufactured by Rotork Gears have been supplied for the operation of giant butterfly valves in an RMB17bn project designed to increase, improve and secure the future supply of fresh water to Shanghai.The Qingcaosha raw water project will provide a daily supply of over 7m tonnes of clean water via a network of huge pipelines, the main four with a diameter of 5.5 metres. Rotork heavy duty model IW17 worm gearboxes have been ordered to operate butterfly valve made by China Valve Technology Ltd. With a gear ratio of 14142:1 and an output torque of 850,000 Nm, the gearboxes enable manual valve operation or operation with a portable pneumatic tool.

Aker Solutions has been awarded an NOK485m contract by Technip to supply a mono ethylene glycol (MEG) reclamation plant for the Ichthys LNG project in Australia. This includes system engineering and supply of key equipment for the MEG plant. The equipment deliveries will be in 2013 and 2014. MEG is used to prevent hydrate formation in subsea pipelines. It is injected at the wellhead and follows the gas and liquid flow to the gas processing facility Ichthys is a JV between INPEX (Ooperator), TOTAL and other participants.

Foster Wheeler has been awarded a contract by EPAX Pharma UK Ltd, part of Trygg Pharma AS, for EPCm services to convert parts of the former Lundbeck pharma plant at Seal Sands, Teesside, UK, to process fish oil to produce an omega-3 API. This award extends FW’s involvement in the project, which commenced with basic engineering in the Q3/11, followed by FEED. Operational qualification of the converted facility is due in Q1/13. FW was first involved in the Seal Sands facility in 2000, with a contract from Lundbeck to design and build a bulk pharma facility.

Linde is to construct two 1,200 tonnes/day air separation units at the Kalinganagar industrial complex in Odisha, India, for Tata Steel. Linde will be investing Euro80m in this project - part of an on-site gases supply contract for a new 3,000ktpa steelworks. Due on stream in 2014, the ASUs will supply gaseous oxygen, nitrogen and argon to the steelworks, and liquid gases for the regional market. Linde also plans a network of pipelines at Kalinganagar to supply other steel producers.

Aker Solutions has signed an NOK440m contract with McDermott, the main EPCI contractor for the Ichthys gas-condensate field development subsea umbilical, riser, flowline (SURF) project, for INPEX in Australia. The scope includes the engineering, procurement, fabrication and supply of static and dynamic umbilicals, totalling 63km for the Ichthys LNG project. Equipment within this contract comprise five dynamic umbilicals, seven static umbilicals, 36 steel tube flying leads, and associated equipment and hardware.

CB&I has been awarded a contract by Petronas for the license and engineering design work for five petrochemicals units. The project is part of the new refinery and petrochemicals integrated development (RAPID) project to be located in
Johor, Malaysia. Lummus Technology will be providing technology for a world-scale steam cracker complex comprising ethylene, butadiene, benzene, isobutylene and MTBE units.

Boulting Group has completed the refurbishment and installation of a turret head edge trimmer, scrap chopper and all associated equipment on the AP1 Line at Tata Steel’s Orb Works, South Wales. Tata’s AP1 Line manufactures high specification grain orientated electrical steel coils for use in transformers and motor core/stator laminations. The side trimmers remove rough edges from the steel, producing a high-precision finish, without the need for prior processing through a dedicated side trimming line.

CTCI Consortium has selected Yokogawa to supply control systems and field devices for the Kimanis combined-cycle power plant, which is being built for Kimanis Power Sdn. Bhd. in the northeast part of Borneo island. The Kimanis combined cycle power plant will have a total output of 300 MW (three 100 MW units). The first 100 MW unit, now under construction, is to start operation in laate 2013. This order includes Yokogawa’s Centum VP control systems for the power plant’s boilers and its boiler and turbine auxiliary facilities; its ProSafe-RS SIS; exhaust gas analysers; and differential pressure/pressure transmitters.

Showa Denko KK (SDK) has started commercial-scale production of biodegradable polyester resin, which is based on bio-derived succinic acid. Film grades of the material, called Bionolle, are being produced at its Tatsuno Plant in Hyogo Prefecture. SDK said it aims to expand the biodegradable, bioplastics by the end of this yea. It is also planning to secure the supply of 10-20ktpa of bio-derived succinic acid.

Jacobs Engineering Group has received a five-year contract from Shell Canada Energy for FEED, procurement, construction support, commissioning support and related services for the Jackpine Mine Tailings and Infrastructure Program. The Jackpine Mine is one of two mines at Shell’s Albian Sands site near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.

Fluor Corp. has begun work for a Sasol tar separator project in South Africa. The new contract is for EPCM services for the replacement of 24 duplex stainless steel separator tanks. The gas liquor separation units are to separate various gaseous, liquid and solid components from the gas liquor streams that originate in the gasification, gas cooling, rectisol and phenosolvan units. Construction is expected to be complete by mid-2015.

Burckhardt Compression has won an order from Zeeland Refinery NV - a JV between Total and Lukoil - to deliver one process gas compressor API 618 for its refinery expansion in The Netherlands. The unit will be used within the diesel hydrotreating process as a hydrogen make-up gas compressor. The pressure of the compressor ranges from 25 up to 188 bar with a rated motor power of 7,000kW and the compressor is designed for a maximum rod load of 1,500 kN.

Enterprise Products Partners LP has awarded CB&I a contract for the license and basic engineering of a propane dehydrogenation unit to be located on the Texas Gulf Coast. The unit will use the CATOFIN propane dehydrogenation process from Lummus Technology that employs Süd-Chemie’s latest CATOFIN catalyst to produce around 750ktpa of polymer-grade propylene.

Kvaerner is to sell the downstream-focused operations and related assets of its EPC Center Houston to Japanese company IHI Corp. Kvaerner’s EPC Center Houston and IHI have cooperated as joint venture partners in the delivery of LNG terminals and oil and gas processing facilities in North America.

Total has recently announced a significant gas and condensate discovery in the King Lear prospect on production licenses 146 & 333 in the southern sector of the Norwegian North Sea (Statoil 77,8% operator - Total 22,2%). The King Lear 2/4-21 well has encountered volumes estimated between 70 and 200 million barrels of oil equivalent. The King Lear well was drilled in a water depth of 67 metres to a vertical depth of 5,344 metres below sea level.

PETRONAS is to acquire Progress Energy Resources Corp. for about CAD$5.5bn. The agreement was signed today in Calgary, Canada. The deal builds on the previous arrangement between the two parties to develop a portion of Progress’ shale assets as well as on the intention to pursue the development of an integrated LNG export facility in western Canada.

Shell, Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS), Mitsubishi Corp., and PetroChina Co. Ltd today announced they are developing a proposed LNG export facility in Western Canada, near Kitimat, British Columbia. Shell holds a 40% interest in the LNG Canada project, with KOGAS, Mitsubishi and PetroChina each holding a 20% interest. The proposed project includes the design, construction and operation of a gas liquefaction plant and facilities for the storage and export of LNG, including marine off-loading facilities and shipping. LNG Canada will initially have two LNG trains, each with the capacity to produce 6,000ktpa of LNG.

BASF plans to build a butadiene extraction plant at its Verbund site in Antwerp, Belgium. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 155,000 metric tons and is scheduled to start up during 2014. The investment amount, it said, will be in the high double-digit million euro range.

AUMA has recently installed 190 SA.2 series multi-turn actuators at Zurich Lake water plant – part of enhancements at Lengg Lake. Within the framework of the current upgrade, AUMA actuators have been commissioned for the control of gate valves in a fast filter system.

Honeywell has recently signed a multi-year contract with Linde AG to continue providing its UniSim Design Suite simulation software. More than 200 Linde engineers across the world use the system for the process engineering of olefin, hydrogen and synthesis gas plants, for which it models the complete processes in a single simulation. They also use it for R&D, plant safety design, and as a starting point for detailed engineering of complex equipment such as heat exchangers and distillation columns.

Hermle has been appointed a tier one member of the Nuclear AMRC (Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre) at The University of Sheffield’s Rotherham facility. As a consequence, the next major addition to the machining resources there will be a Hermle C60 U MT. It is due for delivery in October 2012 by the German manufacturer’s agent in the UK and Ireland, Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools.