A joint venture consisting of Belgium’s dredging firm DEME and Dutch marine contractor Van Oord has won a contract from Switzerland-based Allseas to work on the Santos-operated Darwin pipeline duplication project, located offshore Northern Australia.
Australian LNG player Santos took a final investment decision on this project last month.
The decision will extend the Barossa gas export pipeline to the Santos-operated 3.7 mtpa Darwin LNG facility and allow for the repurposing of the existing Bayu-Undan to Darwin pipeline to facilitate carbon capture and storage (CCS) options.
Under the new contract, Van Oord and DEME would carry out trenching, pipe pull operations, and prepare the shore crossing at the landfall location near the Darwin LNG plant, according to a joint statement issued on Monday.
Additionally, the partners will perform rock placement works to protect the pipeline.
DEME and Van Oord will deploy a cutter suction dredger, trailing suction hopper dredger, and backhoe dredger for this project, as well as a fallpipe vessel for the rock placement works and a linear pulling winch for the pipe pull.
The partners said that project preparations would start immediately.
DEME said in a separate statement it has a “sizable share” of the contract, representing a value for the firm of 50-150 million euros ($50.8 million – $152.5 million).
With the new award, DEME is returning to Australia following previous contracts for projects like Wheatstone and Gladstone, while Van Oord previously worked on the Ichthys LNG project in the Darwin port.