Ichthys FEED project

J P Kenny (

), a subsidiary of Aberdeen-based John Wood Group, has secured a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia.

The Ichthys project is expected to have initial capacity to produce more than eight million tonnes of liquefied natural gas per annum. According to JPK, the contract will require almost 200,000 man-hours of input.

Under the FEED, JPK will be responsible for the pipeline and umbilicals, risers and flowlines (URF), while MCS, another Wood Group company, will design the dynamic riser system.

Gerwyn Williams, group managing director at JPK, said: ‘We are delighted to be engineering our fourth successive multi-billion dollar subsea and pipeline project on the North West Shelf. Our track record on projects such as Woodside's Pluto has been to create savings of hundreds of millions of dollars, and we are pleased that INPEX wants to capitalise on that expertise.'

Phil Brown, operations director of JPK in Perth, added: ‘The riser-engineering capabilities of MCS, a 2008 acquisition by Wood Group, will really help us to devise the best engineering solutions for this project, and the MCS team has been critical in developing our relationship with INPEX. This project will also involve significant contributions from JPK sister companies, Ionik and MSi.'

INPEX Browse, operator of the Ichthys Project, has been collaborating with JPK on concepts for the project's development since 2007. The first shipment of liquefied natural gas is scheduled for 2015.