Baker Hughes scores its first fullstream deal with Gulf of Papua project award

Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE), has been awarded one of the first agreements of its kind with Twinza Oil to provide fullstream support on the Pasca A gas condensate field, which is located off Papua New Guinea in the Gulf of Papua.

To remind, GE’s oil and gas business and Baker Hughes in July closed its merger thus creating a company with a fullstream offering across the full value chain of oil and gas activities—from upstream to midstream to downstream.

According to Baker Hughes’ statement on Tuesday, the Twinza-BHGE fullstream agreement – an industry first – covers services and equipment during Phase I of the Pasca A field Development, including drilling services, wellheads and pressure control equipment for the fourth and final appraisal well.

The appraisal well will be drilled in 3Q 2017, which will be suspended as a future development well, and the final investment decision (FID) to proceed to development is expected in 2018.

Post FID, Baker Hughes said it expects to provide an integrated gas processing solution from the wells through to point of export. The fullstream offering includes a wide range of capabilities in drilling services, subsea equipment, gas processing topsides, gas compression and turbomachinery as well as installation and commissioning services. As part of the fullstream package, BHGE was also be able to bring its expertise to offer a financial solution to enable Twinza to complete appraisal drilling and proceed to FID, the company added.

Lorenzo Simonelli, president and CEO of BHGE said: “This project with Twinza is one of the first times we can truly show the value of combining our legacy strength into one unique fullstream offering.”

“Having a single point of contact and a complete offering for a complex project was one of the key reasons why we partnered with BHGE,” said Huw Evans, CEO of Twinza. “With its fullstream capabilities, BHGE was able to propose a fully integrated services and equipment offering using a modular state of the art approach, high tech solutions and systems that ‘talk to each other’ for optimization. This greatly synergizes the execution of the project while reducing the integration risk if we had engaged several vendors for similar services and equipment.”

Pasca is the first offshore oil and gas development in PNG that will produce natural gas liquids (NGLs) in the form of condensate (a light crude oil) and LPG, and will also produce natural gas. The project is expected to spur development of relevant offshore skills and services in PNG and will prove a significant boost to the PNG economy, providing government revenues, utilizing local services and providing local employment. Additionally, the LPG produced from Pasca will be available to reduce imports, and will offer a competitive alternative to imported diesel fuel for power generation.

Twinza holds 100% of the Pasca A License, located in PPL 328, and has submitted a development plan for the field that will produce the resource across two phases. Phase I consists of the initial production of natural gas liquids (NGLs), including condensate and LPG, with reinjection of dry gas ahead of Phase II. During Phase II, dry gas will be exported.

Back in July, Twinza awarded a drilling contract for its PNG project to COSL jack-up drilling rig, the COSLSeeker, which is scheduled to arrive at Papua New Guinea in late August.