Svitzer’s Chief Commercial Officer, Kasper Friis Nilaus said “this contract supports our global growth strategy of securing long term agreements for provision of advanced towage and other marine services to the oil and gas segment.”?
The contract states that Svitzer will supply four high-power Azimuth Stern Drive (ASD) escort tugs to assist LNG, LPG and condensate carriers into and out of the Port of Darwin once the Project’s onshore processing facility is up and running in late 2017. The fleet will consist of two existing vessels plus two new-builds.
The company will build a new tug base at the East Arm Wharf and expand its local Darwin workforce to support the expected increase in operational activity within the Port of Darwin.
As well as towage, the other services Svitzer will be required to provide are: a safety standby tug that can be deployed quickly; emergency and environment incident response; fire-fighting; support for maintenance work on INPEX’s marine infrastructure; and salvage operations within the Port.
The contract comes with the option to extend it up to a maximum of 19 years.
The Ichthys LNG project is a joint venture between Inpex as operator and Total E&P Australia. When complete and in operation, Ichthys is expected to produce and ship about 8.9 MMt of LNG and 1.6 MMt of LPG per year, along with approximately 100,000 BBl/d of condensate at peak.
In September 2015, INPEX officially floated its central processing facility (CPF) in South Korea. However, the project came under fire in the same month, accused of misreporting months of safety and injury incidents. The contractors strongly rejected the claims.