J. Ray McDermott, S.A. (“J. Ray”), a subsidiary of McDermott International, Inc. (NYSE: MDR) (“McDermott”), announced today that it has been awarded additional work offshore Qatar by Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II). On March 31, 2004, Ras Laffan exercised the WH9 deck and pipeline option under the RasGas Expansion Project Contract, which was originally awarded to J. Ray three years ago.
"We’re pleased to receive the award for another significant sector of the RasGas Expansion project, and it is a welcome addition to our Middle East backlog," said Bob Deason, President and Chief Operating Officer of J. Ray McDermott.
Under the WH9 option, J. Ray will handle the turnkey project management, design engineering, procurement, fabrication, installation, hook-up and mechanical completion of a 2,200-ton wellhead deck, as well as the installation of a 7 kilometer (“km”) 28” intra field pipeline and 10 km intra field subsea cable. The project, valued at approximately $70 million, is expected to take 33 months to complete.
The deck is scheduled for installation in the last quarter of 2006. Once in place, it will handle a production of 1,200 million standard cubic feet of produced fluids (gas condensate and water) per day (MMSCFD) for supply to the onshore plant at Ras Laffan.
The WH9 facility will be similar to the three wellhead platforms already engineered, constructed and installed by J. Ray under the RasGas Expansion Project. The first platform, WH7, was successfully mechanically completed and handed over to the customer in January 2004. The other two platforms, WH4 and WH5, are currently being fabricated at J. Ray’s Jebel Ali facility, and are scheduled to be installed during 2005. In addition, the associated WH4 105km 38” pipeline from the platform to onshore facilities is currently scheduled for installation during the summer of 2004, ten months ahead of schedule.
