• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Modec shines on Shenzi FEED job

-

 22 April 2005 00:43 GMT

Deep-water solutions provider Modec International has scooped the award to provide front-end engineering and design for a tension-leg platform destined for BHP Billiton's Shenzi discovery in the US Gulf.
The shortlist to provide the work had been down to two TLP providers Modec and fellow Houston rival Atlantia Offshore.

Modec will work the FEED based on its Moses-design TLP, similar to Enterprise Product Partners' Marco Polo facility, which is currently producing in Green Canyon Block 608, about eight miles (13 kilometres) north-west of the Shenzi field site.

The FEED is designed to generate pricing for final design and the subsequent construction contract, which is expected to be signed during the second half of the year.

BHP's board is expected to officially sanction the Shenzi development this autumn.

A source close to the job confirmed Modec is working on Shenzi, but declined to elaborate.

A BHP spokesman would not confirm the Modec work. "We have a development team assessing data and some studies are under way," he said.

"The project has not yet been sanctioned for development and there is no timeline to publicly disclose specifics of the project."

Shenzi is located in Green Canyon Block 653 in about 4400 feet of water. The Shenzi wet-tree platform will have a boilerplate throughput capacity of 100,000 barrels per day of oil with associated gas handling.

The large capacity has led to some industry speculation that BHP may be looking at the facility as a centralised hub to tie in nearby discoveries.

The operator's closest undeveloped discovery to Shenzi is its Neptune find in Atwater Valley blocks 574 and 575 about 15 miles to the east.

Atlantia is working on a FEED for Neptune based on its SeaStar monohull TLP design.

Shenzi was thought to be a surefire subsea tie-back to the Marco Polo facility up until late last year when results from the Shenzi-3 well prompted BHP management to proclaim the potential existence of a "multi-hundred-million-barrel hydrocarbon resource".

Shenzi-3 encountered hydrocarbons in Lower Miocene-aged reservoirs with about 100 metres of net oil pay in a 125-metre gross hydrocarbon column. An updip sidetrack well that was subsequently drilled from the initial probe confirmed the presence of the hydrocarbon column.

BHP drilled the Shenzi-4 well earlier this year, but did not release results from the probe. The operator is drilling the Shenzi-5 well using Transocean's semi-submersible Deepwater Horizon in Block 654.

The operator previously hinted that one of these wells would drill down to test the lower tertiary potential of the prospect.

BHP Billiton operates Shenzi and holds a 44% interest with Amerada Hess and BP each on 28%.

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