Larsen & Toubro has confirmed the award of a field development contract off western India from state giant Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).

The contractor beat off competition from a clutch of other hopefuls to land the contract for the Neelam field redevelopment and B-173-AC projects in the Heera-Panna block in the Mumbai Offshore basin.

Upstream reported earlier this month that L&T was expected to be named winner of the deal, having submitted the lowest bid.

The engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning deal is valued by L&T at 16.56 billion Indian rupees ($253.51 million today). Upstream reported a little over a week ago that L&T had won with a bid of around $246.79 million.

The contract covers one new processing platform with gas processing and compression facilities, three wellhead platforms, a 32-kilometre pipeline, clamp-on on three existing platforms, as well as topsides modification work on eight existing platforms.

The new process platform - NLG - will be bridge-linked to the existing NLP platform, and will include a new gas compressor with capacity of 1.71 million cubic metres per day. As for the wellhead platforms, the NLM-12 and NLM-13 wellhead platforms will have six slots each, while the B-173-AC unit will have nine slots.

The three clamp-on slots are NLM-5, NLM-6 and NLM-8.

Four in battle for ONGC’s Neelam redevelopment

The Neelam redevelopment project alone is likely to produce about 20 million barrels of incremental crude and 4.8 billion cubic metres of additional gas by 2034 to 2035.

ONGC re-tendered the integrated Neelam project in September, as it did not award the offshore project after the previous tender exercise.

A consortium of Singapore-based Swiber and Indonesia’s Gunanusa Utama Fabricators had last year emerged as the lowest bidder in the previous tender with a bid of about $221 million, and was expected to win the offshore project.

However, ONGC decided not to award a contract following complaints by rival contenders and amid Swiber’s emerging financial problems.

A total of three commercial bids are said to have finally been opened by ONGC on 7 March. A grouping of Malaysia’s Sapura­Kencana and Indian domestic player Afcons was second in line, offering a price of $310.44 million, which included the service tax component, sources told Upstream this month.

ONGC launches fresh tender for Neelam job

Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC), which was seen as a key contender for the Neelam project, finished as the highest bidder, quoting a tax inclusive rate of $321.1 million, added sources.

A fourth bidder, comprising a consortium of French giant TechnipFMC with Malaysia Marine & Heavy Engineering (MMHE) was disqualified, sources added.