Dutch offshore contractor Boskalis is in pole position to win a decommissioning contract from Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell for work at its Tapti field off India’s west coast.

A source close to the development said that Boskalis is “well placed” for the decommissioning job and suggested that a contract is likely to be signed within days.

A second source also confirmed the development and added Boskalis is thought to have pipped other key contenders that included Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro and Malaysia’s Sapura Energy.

The Tapti decommissioning project was initially thought to be valued at close to $100 million.

However, one source said that its scope was scaled down substantially and the contract value is expected to be significantly lower than that initial estimate.

Expressions of interest for the decommissioning job were invited by Shell last year, but the tender process got delayed on several occasions.

The project’s workscope is said to involve the removal and cutting of subsea pipelines, removal of wellhead platform topsides and jacket along with onshore transportation, disposal of topsides and jackets and surveys after the completion of the project.

The Panna, Mukta and Tapti oil and gas fields on the west coast of India are operated by BG Exploration & Production, which was acquired by Shell last year.

With output from the Mid and South Tapti fields having declined sharply, the partners in the Panna-Mukta and Tapti areas — operator Shell, private sector giant Reliance Industries and state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) — decided in 2016 to abandon the Tapti field.

The field at its peak produced about 12 million cubic metres per day of gas, but that was down to as little as 100,000 cubic metres per day last year.

ONGC has taken over some of the abandoned assets of the Tapti gas field from its joint venture partners and plans to use them to produce gas from its Daman field.

These assets include subsea pipelines and gas gathering stations as well as a process platform.

While the Tapti field has been abandoned, the Shell-Reliance and ONGC joint venture continues to operate the Panna-Mukta field, which is primarily oil bearing and is located in the Arabian Sea, some 90 kilometres north-west of Mumbai.

The fields together produced about 19,000 barrels per day of oil and between 5 MMcmd million per day and 6 MMcmd of gas last year.

ONGC holds a 40% interest in the Panna-Mukta and Tapti fields while Reliance and Shell have 30% each.

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