CANADIAN OILPATCH / INTERNATIONAL
An area to watch.
Calgary Herald
Calgary oilpatch winning hunt for contracts in Chad
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Aggressive Calgary companies are in a good position to make sales to a $3.5 billion US project to export oil from Chad.
Details about the huge development of three new oil fields and construction of two pipelines, refinery, power plant and related infrastructure will be unveiled at a breakfast meeting at the Calgary Professional Club Friday.
Jim Perry, executive director of Petro-Trade, the young export-boosting organization that's taken over some duties previously handled by the provincial government, will also offer advice about how to land contracts.
"There's definitely some business for Canadian companies in some of the early bid packages," says Perry, who spent two weeks in Africa scouting the situation.
Here's a small taste of what's being served with breakfast:
Exxon Corp., Shell Petroleum and Elf Aquitaine plan to build 1,050 kilometres of 30-inch pipeline from three oil fields near Doba in southern Chad to Kribi, on the coast of neighboring Cameroon.
Plans call for spending about $1.7 billion to develop the field and $1.8 billion on the pipeline. The companies expect 300 to 350 wells will produce 200,000 barrels of oil a day for at least 20 years, beginning in the year 2000.
Perry thinks the wells will be drilled by Parker Drilling Co. of Tulsa, Okla., "but there are a lot of ancillary things such as wireline work, mud and drilling fluids, things that do not require a large up-front investment that Canadian companies could certainly take a run at."
Calgary's Kvaerner Process Systems is in the running for the contract to build oil treatment facilities.
Fluor Daniel Engineering in Houston is doing the preliminary engineering work for the whole development and is putting together five bid packages covering:
1. Drilling and completion of the wells to start in 1999 with movement or rigs and material to begin in 1998. This contract includes drilling mud, mud logging, wireline logging cementing and perforating.
2. Facilities including wellheads, submersible pumps, flow lines, injection lines, housing, camp and catering and airport maintenance and upgrading.
3. Processing equipment including dehydrators, heaters, treaters and other equipment needed to prepare oil for shipment.
4. "Export equipment" including two pumping stations to be built in Cameroon, storage and offshore loading facilities in Kribi and construction of a 15-kilometre underwater pipeline from Kribi to the loading and mooring structures.
5. Construction of the pipeline itself. A short list of contractors has already been prepared. They are believed to include Saipem from Italy, Bechtel and Willbros from the U.S., and Mannesman of Germany.
"The big thing is to know it wouldn't hurt Calgary companies to be in contact with Exxon and Fluor Daniel because there are still some details that need to be determined, for example the type of completion they will do in the wells," Perry says.
"The field development package will probably be bid to one contractor so Canadian companies have to find out who will be on the short list of contractors and contact them to make sure they are considered as part of the package."
Work on the pipeline will start before the field development and provide opportunities for surveyors, welding inspectors and suppliers of portable housing,
A separate project involves building a smaller 350-kilometre, six-inch pipeline to carry light crude from Sedigui, north of Lake Chad, to the capital of N'Djamena, where it will feed a small refinery and a 12 megawatt power plant.
SNC Lavalin has been named general contractor for this project, which Perry thinks gives other Canadian companies an edge.
A $20 breakfast ticket may be a great bargain. They are still available from Petro-Trade at 263-7171. |
