Victor Schmidt
Exploration Editor
Offshore

Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, and Edison have awarded Aker Kværner a $900 million engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) management services contract for the development of the Isola di Porto Levante LNG terminal. The terminal will be 15 km off Italy's eastern Veneto coast in 30 m water depth in the northern Adriatic Sea. Jon Erick Reinhardsen, executive vice president of Aker Kværner, presented the new contract at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, on May 4.

The terminal will have a total storage capacity of 250,000 cu m and will be equipped with a berthing/mooring system for offloading LNG vessels delivering up to 150,000 cu m of LNG. The terminal will have a regas capacity of 8 bcm/yr. Two ships per week will deliver LNG from Qatar's North field.

According to Reinhardsen, this structure will be the first concrete gravity-based LNG storage and regasification structure ever built.

The EPC contract covers the concrete gravity based structure, LNG storage tanks, and topside regasification facilities. The regasification construction timing is not yet finalized. Terminal startup is planned for 2008.

"It is a stepping stone for our company to be awarded the contract for the execution of the Isola di Porto Levante offshore LNG terminal," said Inge K. Hansen, president and CEO of Aker Kværner. There is a future market for offshore LNG-terminals and Aker Kværner is well positioned with proven competence and technology in concrete substructures and excellent execution skills."

Simen Lieungh, executive vice president of Aker Kværner said, "This project utilizes the joint competence in Aker Kværner, such as our regasification expertise in Houston and our concrete expertise in Oslo, as well as the group's proven project execution model."

According to Reinhardsen, project expertise from Aker's work on the Sakhalin 2 concrete structure, completing this summer, will be transferred to work on the new contract. Aker is upgrading a dock in southern Spain to serve the LNG project.

"This is the largest single contract Aker Kværner has ever been awarded," said Torbjørn Andersen, senior vice president for Group Communications in Aker Kværner.

The partners in the Isola di Porto Levante LNG Terminal project are Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, and Edison. The contract is signed by Aker Kværner Contracting AS, a company within the Aker Kværner group.

5/05/04