Saipem to supervise gas pipeline it laid between Libya and Italy in early 2000s

Italy’s Saipem has been appointed to supervise and provide subsea intervention services for the offshore and onshore sections of a natural gas pipeline connecting Libya and Italy through the Mediterranean Sea.

Under the contract secured with GreenStream BV, a midstream player in the Mediterranean Sea owned by Eni North Africa and National Oil Corporation (NOC), Saipem will provide integrated inspection engineering, maintenance, and emergency services for the GreenStream pipeline.

The project consists of the Mellitah gas compression station (MGCS) in Libya, an underwater gas pipeline 510 kilometers long and deep down to more than 1,127 meters, and a receiving terminal in Gela, Sicily, Italy.

The activities will be managed by Saipem’s center of excellence for robotics, underwater technologies and services Sonsub, and executed in coordination with the Saipem Engineering Hub located in Fano, Italy.

According to Saipem, the scope of work streamlines the integrated management of survey data and critical spares, the provision of specialized engineering services related to asset integrity, and readiness services for repair interventions in case of a wide range of damage scenarios.

Specifically, repair interventions in case of damage will be performed via the SiRCoS remotely operated repair system industrialized by Sonsub and qualified to operate in water depths of up to 2,200 meters.

The new contract comes on the heels of activities Saipem has been carrying out for GreenStream since 2008, including asset integrity, inspection, maintenance and emergency pipeline services, and expands to cover a wider range of scenarios and needs.

The two companies established a long-term cooperation in 2002 when the Italian firm was awarded a pipelaying contract.

In terms of other news related to Saipem, it is worth mentioning that the company recently secured multimillion-dollar assignments on two projects off the coast of Saudi Arabia with the country’s oil and gas heavyweight Aramco.