Aban only Indian company qualified for MOPU

Vol 21, PW 1 (05 Oct 17) Exploration & Production

Several Indian companies are interested in ONGC's tender for a Mobile Offshore and Processing Unit (MOPU) at its western offshore Ratna and R-Series fields but only Aban Offshore appears qualified to bid alone.

Aban's experience owning and operating Floating Production Unit (FPU) Tahara at eastern offshore field PY-3 for Hardy Oil & Gas makes it the only Indian company qualified, believe industry sources. What of Oilmax, which owned and operated a FPU offshore Nigeria? Oilmax it seems transferred the FPU a few months ago to its Asian Oilfield Services subsidiary, making it ineligible to bid alone.

Other Indian companies believed to be interested are Mumbai-based Askara Offshore, Shapoorji Pallonji, IISP Offshore based at Mohali in Punjab and Mumbai-based Dynamic Drilling. "They all need to find a foreign partner," says a source, "so they can meet ONGC's condition of owning and operating a similar unit for at least one year in the past 10 years." Potential foreign bidders include US-based Coastal Marine, Triune Offshore, Malaysia's Sapura Energy, Japan's Modec, Netherland-based Bluewater Energy and Malaysia's MISC.

ONGC is selling tender documents from September 12 until the November 7 bid deadline. Whoever wins will have to provide the MOPU - usually a decommissioned jack-up converted to an offshore oil and gas processing unit - within 10 months of the LoA plus another month to commission and hook-up to the established Ratna platform and five planned wellhead platforms.

ONGC wants the MOPU to have a minimum 20-year design life and is offering an initial 'firm' contract of 12 years followed by an optional six years at 60% of the initial day rate. ONGC wants the MOPU moored in water depths of 40-50 metres at the R-12A platform and equipped to handle up to 14,583 b/d oil, 250,000 cm/d associated gas, 5976 b/d produced water and 18,000 b/d water injected into the reservoir. Located 130-km southwest of Mumbai, the Ratna and R-Series fields were discovered by ONGC in 1979 and consist of oil and gas bearing structures R-7, 7A, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 71. The major structure is R-12 with the R-12A platform. Together the fields are estimated to hold 57.6m tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas in place. Between February 1993 and September 1994 they produced 1.3m tonnes oil and 815m cubic metres of gas. In 1996 the fields were won by Essar Oil and the UK's Premier Oil but the PSC was never signed. In March 2016 the government scrapped the award returning the fields to ONGC which is planning 22 producer wells and nine water injector wells to begin production from 2018-19.

Aban only Indian company qualified for MOPU

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