en.Wedoany.com Reported - UAE state-owned energy company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and its partners have issued tender awards for the next phase of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts for the Upper Zakum offshore oil field expansion project. Project partner INPEX disclosed this information on June 26.
Offshore energy publication Upstream reported that UAE-based NMDC Energy, U.S. contractor McDermott, and Italian contractor Saipem were awarded these contracts. Neither ADNOC nor the contractors mentioned in the report have publicly confirmed the awards, nor did they immediately respond to ENR's requests for comment. Neither INPEX nor ADNOC disclosed the value of each contract package. Industry reports estimate the expansion project is worth over $10 billion.
Upper Zakum is operated in partnership with ExxonMobil and Japan Oil Development Co., a subsidiary of INPEX. Located approximately 52 miles northwest of Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf, the field is part of the Zakum field, which ADNOC describes as the world's second-largest offshore oil field. Oil was discovered at the field in 1963; ADNOC began developing the Upper Zakum reservoir in 1977.
Prior to INPEX's disclosure on June 26, years of engineering, design, and procurement activities had taken place, including front-end engineering design and the procurement process for three contract packages for the Upper Zakum expansion project, previously reported by Middle East commercial publication MEED. The project aims to increase Upper Zakum's production capacity to 1.5 million barrels per day, marking the latest milestone in decades of expansion and modernization of the offshore field.
According to ExxonMobil, the development is centered around four artificial islands, the largest of which is roughly equivalent to 135 American football fields. The islands were designed using hydrodynamic models tailored to local tidal and wave conditions. ExxonMobil stated that the artificial island concept supports higher-capacity land-based rigs while replacing some of the field's original offshore platforms and pipeline networks with more durable, cost-effective infrastructure, combining extended-reach drilling with fewer wells and drilling locations.
Earlier phases established much of the infrastructure supporting the current development. Technip's 2011 engineering contract covered front-end engineering design for process units, including gas separation, gas lift compression, booster gas compression, power generation, utilities, interconnecting pipelines, and modifications to existing facilities. ENR-reviewed documents from earlier Upper Zakum expansion phases described additional on-island surface facilities, including water injection plants, produced water treatment and disposal systems, wellhead manifolds, local equipment rooms, production bottleneck elimination, and helipad facilities, as well as integration with ADNOC's offshore electrification initiative, "Project Lightning."
This $3.8 billion, 3.2-gigawatt electrification initiative uses two high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine transmission lines, each over 80 miles long, to connect offshore operations to the UAE's onshore power grid and replace offshore gas-fired power generation. ADNOC describes the network as the first HVDC submarine transmission system in the Middle East and North Africa.
ADNOC's artificial island development strategy has also enabled ultra-extended-reach wells. In 2022, the company announced it had drilled the world's longest oil and gas well from Umm Al Anbar Island, reaching a measured depth of 50,000 feet (approximately 9.5 miles), while tapping into more of the reservoir without expanding the offshore footprint. INPEX stated that these EPC contracts support its strategy to expand operations by 60% by 2035.
