Eni, KMG award Kazakhstan shipyard design gig

International consultancy and engineering firms Royal HaskoningDHV and Witteveen+Bos have been awarded the $18 million contract by energy company Eni to design a new shipyard in Kazakhstan, near the town of Kuryk on the Caspian Sea.

The new shipyard is of great strategic importance to Kazakhstan’s economy as it will provide ship building, repair and maintenance to support the country’s growing oil and gas exploration and production activities and the project will also benefit local communities through new employment opportunities, the press release reads.

The project is jointly managed by Italian energy company Eni and the National Company KazMunayGas (KMG). The first phase of the project will see ship building at a rate of 400 tonnes per month and maintenance of 70 ships a year.

Royal HaskoningDHV Project Director Wim Klomp said: “We are working closely with our partner Witteveen+Bos and local consultancy NIPI Neftegas to deliver Front End Engineering Design services for all aspects of Kuryk shipyard and to obtain local statutory approvals on behalf of our client.

“The programme timeline is very short, so our challenge is to create a fully integrated project team that allows rapid decision making and efficient co-ordination between the large number of different but inter-related technical areas within the project. Our focus is to maximise local content, such as the choice of engineering solutions for the construction phase, and operational methods used in the working shipyard.”

Services encompass project management, planning, onshore marine works, buildings, and mechanical & electrical services.

Witteveen+Bos Project Director Egbert Teunissen said: “In the tunneling sector we have worked successfully in partnership with Royal HaskoningDHV around the world for more than 25 years. The strength of this relationship helped us to quickly develop a strong collaborative team during the bid stage for the design contract. Our local presence in Kazakhstan for the last 20 years and Royal HaskoningDHV’s specialist shipyard expertise really do make the perfect combination for this project. Now we have won the contract we are looking forward to proving to how well we can work together and deliver a successful project for our client.”

With the design phase now underway the Eni-KMG client team are now starting to identify potential international partners with shipbuilding and ship repair expertise to invest in and operate the new shipyard.

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