McDermott in charge of all offshore infrastructure for Qatar’s ‘massive’ natural gas field expansion project

U.S. offshore engineering and construction firm McDermott has secured an engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract for pipelines and cables with Qatar’s state-owned oil and gas company QatarEnergy for the expansion of the 1971-discovered North Field.

The contract for the North Field South (NFS) project covers almost 250 kilometers of offshore and onshore gas pipelines connecting five new offshore wellhead platforms with two new onshore LNG trains in addition to subsea composite power and control cables.

Work will be managed from McDermott’s Doha office with in-country fabrication support from the QFAB fabrication yard and will be installed with McDermott’s in-house marine assets.

“McDermott is unique in Qatar in that we have been operating and supporting the offshore energy industry since its early developments in the 1990s. Consequently, we have a long history within the energy sector there and have followed its growth from that time until today,” said Mike Sutherland, McDermott’s Senior Vice President, Offshore Middle East.

The NFS infrastructure is designed to supply feed gas for two additional LNG trains and is part of the North Field Expansion Project (NFXP). The North Field LNG expansion program encompasses the North Field East (NFE), the North Field South (NFS), and North Field West (NFW) projects to raise Qatar’s LNG production capacity from 77 to 142 million tons per annum (mtpa) in 2030.​

McDermott’s EPCI contract follows the earlier awards for the NFS Pipelines FEED, the NFS Jackets EPCI, and the NFXP Topsides and Pipelines which included the NFS Topsides.

The start of construction of the expansion project was celebrated in October 2023, when the foundation stone was laid for the NFE and NFS projects, encompassing six mega trains.

The North Field, shared between Iran and Qatar and known as South Pars on the Iranian side, is perceived to be the world’s largest single non-associated natural gas field, which lies off the northeast shore of the Qatar peninsula, covering an area of more than 6,000 square kilometers, equivalent to about half the country’s land area.

“We’re honored to once again receive the trust of QatarEnergy and QatarEnergy LNG to deliver some of their largest and most strategically important projects,” said Neil Gunnion, McDermott’s Qatar Country Manager and Vice President Operations.

“McDermott is now responsible for all of the offshore infrastructure associated with Qatar’s massive North Field Expansion, with the execution done predominantly in Qatar. Between our main execution center in Doha and our QFAB fabrication facility in Ras Laffan, we are able to deliver complex offshore projects for Qatar, in Qatar.”

This is not the first large contract McDermott won with QatarEnergy this year. Namely, the U.S firm at the start of 2024 secured an EPC package for wellhead platforms valued at about $2.1 billion and awarded to a consortium of McDermott Middle East and Qingdao McDermott Wuchuan Offshore Engineering and an EPC package for a central processing platform worth around $1.9 billion given to a consortium of McDermott Middle East Inc. and Hyundai Heavy Industries for the Ruya development project, part of the expansion of the Al-Shaheen field.