Abu Dhabit National Oil Co., the state-owned energy company of the United Arab Emirates, and its partners have issued engineering, procurement and construction awards for the next phase of the Upper Zakum offshore oil field expansion, according to a June 26 disclosure from project partner INPEX.
Upstream, an offshore energy publication, later reported that UAE-based NMDC Energy, US contractor McDermott and Italian contractor Saipem received the awards, although neither the oil company, known as ADNOC, nor the contractors reported publicly confirmed the awards or immediately responded to ENR’s requests for comment.
Neither INPEX nor ADNOC disclosed the values of the packages. Industry reports have described the expansion as a program valued at more than $10 billion.
Upper Zakum is operated in partnership with ExxonMobil and Japan Oil Development Co., a subsidiary of INPEX.
Located about 52 kilometers northwest of Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf, Upper Zakum is part of the Zakum field, which ADNOC describes as the world’s second largest offshore oil field. Oil was discovered there in 1963; ADNOC started development of the Upper Zakum reservoir in 1977.
INPEX’s June 26 disclosure follows several years of engineering, design and procurement activity, including front-end engineering and a three-package procurement process for the current Upper Zakum expansion previously reported by MEED, a Middle East business publication.
The project aims to increase Upper Zakum’s production capacity to 1.5 million barrels per day, the latest milestone in a decades-long effort to expand and modernize the offshore field.
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According to ExxonMobil, the development is built around four man-made islands, the largest of which is roughly the size of 135 American football fields. The islands were designed using hydrodynamic modeling adapted to local tidal and wave conditions.
The map shows the location of the Upper Zakum offshore oil field in the Persian Gulf, about 52 miles northwest of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Map courtesy of ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil says the island concept supports higher-capacity onshore drilling rigs while replacing portions of the field’s legacy offshore rig and pipeline network with more durable and capital-efficient infrastructure, combining extended-reach drilling with fewer wells and drill sites.
The previous phases established much of the infrastructure that supports today’s development. A 2011 Technip engineering contract covered front-end engineering for process units, including gas separation, gas lift compression, booster gas compression, power generation, utilities, interconnecting piping and modifications to existing facilities.
Engineering documents from a previous Upper Zakum expansion reviewed by ENR describe additional surface facilities on the island, including water injection plants, produced water treatment and disposal systems, well headers, local equipment rooms, production debottlenecking facilities and helipads, as well as integration with “Project Lightning”, ADNOC’s offshore electrification program.
The $3.8 billion 3.2 GW electrification initiative uses two high-voltage DC subsea transmission links, each more than 80 miles long, to connect offshore operations to the UAE’s onshore power grid and replace offshore gas-fired electricity generation. ADNOC says the network is the first high-voltage, direct-current submarine transmission system in the Middle East and North Africa.
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ADNOC’s artificial island development strategy has also enabled increasingly longer extended reach wells.
In 2022, the company announced it had drilled the world’s longest oil and gas well off Umm Al Anbar Island, reaching a measured depth of 50,000 feet (about 9.5 miles) while accessing additional parts of the reservoir without expanding its offshore footprint.
INPEX said the EPC awards support its strategy to expand its business by 60% by 2035.
