Chevron To Work On Agbami Offloading System

Chevron Nigeria Limited on Friday signed a $130 million contract for the Agbami Offloading System with SBM France/Stolt Offshore West Africa Consortium, Xinhua agency reported.

Mike Illanne, general manager of Deepwater Assets of Chevron Nigeria, signed the contract on behalf of CNL, FAMFA, Statoil, Petrobra and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. while Steve Judd and Nicolas Abela signed for the contractors -- Stolt Offshore and SBM respectively.
Speaking at the ceremony, Illanne said the contract was for the engineering, procurement, installation and inauguration of the Agbami Offloading System.

"Under the contract," he said, "the consortium will engineer, procure, fabricate, transport, install, hook-up and inaugurate the system which will comprise a surface offloading buoy connected to the Agbami FPSO by 20-inch steel offloading lines."

He added that the contract was the last major Agbami contract to be signed by the CNL and its partners and that the contract had a great amount of local content.

"The local content of this scope is very robust and includes fabrication of the buoy and final outfitting in a designated local yard in Nigeria," he said.

"I am happy that the work scope of this contract will further enhance the capacity and competence of Nigerians in the area of offshore production technology," he added.

He assured that "with the pace and momentum we are moving, I am confident that we will be able to achieve the target of bringing the Agbami Field on stream by 2008."

On the utilization of associated gas in the Agbami field, Illanne said all the gas produced would be reinjected and the project would eliminate wastes.

CNL and its partners had in the past few months signed the contracts for the Agbami FPSO construction, Subsea Vendor and the Subsea Installation.