Uchenna Izuora
Royal Dutch oil giant Shell is planning to award a significant contract in Nigeria that could involve the supply of up to 14 offshore vessels chartered on a firm and call-off basis.
The contract is expected to be awarded in the next few months.
This is to enhance Shell’s focus in Nigeria especially in its offshore fields such as EA and Bonga as well as new schemes such as HI and HA in shallow water and Bonga South West/Aparo in deep water.
The vessel prequalification exercise was kicked off by Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, which will use them for shallow-water assets in its east and west divisions and also on Bonga.
The proposed contract is due to start in the second quarter of 2022 and run for five years with an option to extend by a further two years.
Shell has split the workscope into two and needs to receive prequalification documents by 25 October.
For the shallow-water operations, an anchor handling vessel, with an 85 to 100 tonne bollard pull, is required for 24-hour operations.
Shell will only consider vessels up to five years old and with a minimum deck area of 200 square metres.
A number of other vessels are also needed to be accessed on a call-off basis.
These include an extra anchor handling vessel, a platform supply vessel, a fast support intervention vessel, a personnel carrier, a dive support vessel and an accommodation vessel/flotel with walk-to work (W2W) capability.
In this scenario, W2W means workers can walk between the flotel and the platforms of floating production, storage and offloading vessels by means of a gangway or a temporary bridge.
Specialist marine services will also be needed on a call-off basis (related to for instance autonomous underwater vehicles) as well as the provision of marine personnel.
Shell’s requirements at Bonga are exactly the same as for its shallow-water assets, which means up to 14 vessels may be required in total over the contract lifetimes.