FEBRUARY 8, 2013 — Singapore's Sembcorp Marine says that its wholly-owned SMOE subsidiary has secured a contract worth about Singapore $900 million (about US$ 727 million) from Det norske oljeselskap ASA, Norway. It covers engineering, procurement and construction of the Process, Drilling and Quarters Platform (pdQ) Topsides to be installed at a water depth of 112 m for the Ivar Aasen development in the North Sea.

The Ivar Aasen project is situated west of the Johan Sverdrup-field in the Norwegian Continental Shelf, 180km west of Stavanger, containing approximately 150 million barrels of oil equivalents.

The contract covers the provision of engineering, procurement and construction of the topside. SMOE will be working with its engineering partner Wood Group Mustang in executing this project.

Facilities on the 13,700-tonne topsides, which are integrated with a 70-man living quarters/helideck module, will include modules for process, gas compression, separation, water injection, flare boom, metering and utilities.

Construction is expected to commence in December 2013 with sail-away scheduled in March 2016. First oil is expected in the fourth quarter of 2016.