McDermott Bags FEED Work At Omani LNG Plant

US-based McDermott International announced on July 15 it had landed a contract for front-end engineering design (FEED) services at the Sohar LNG bunkering project on the northern coast of Oman.

The project’s developers are France’s Total and state-owned Oman Oil. Under the contract, McDermott will plan out mid-scale onshore LNG facilities and prepare a competitive tender for the plant’s engineering, procurement, supply, construction and commissioning.

“This award is a reflection of McDermott’s 60-year history of delivering innovative LNG solutions worldwide, beginning with our tank storage solutions in the 1950s, to our liquefaction capabilities today,” McDermott’s senior vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, Linh Austin, said in a statement.

McDermott will start work immediately and will include the contract in its order backlog for the second quarter.

The LNG bunkering sector is poised for rapid growth as shippers adapt to stricter caps on fuel sulphur levels under IMO 2020 rules. In a report published July 11, Zion Market Research estimated that the market would grow to more than $12.1bn in size by 2024, up from less than $400mn in 2017.

Total signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Oman’s government on developing the Sohar bunkering plant in May last year. The facility will be supplied with feedstock from the Shell-operated Block 6, located onshore, and consist initially of one 1mn mt/yr LNG liquefaction train.