J P Kenny Secures Largest Ever FEED Contract for Ichthys LNG Project

J P Kenny, (JPK), a subsidiary of John Wood Group PLC ("Wood Group") is to carry out front end engineering design (FEED) of the pipeline and umbilicals, risers and flowlines (URF), for the INPEX-operated Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia's Browse basin. MCS, another Wood Group company, will design the dynamic riser system.

INPEX Browse Ltd (INPEX), operator of the Ichthys Project on behalf of joint venture participants -- INPEX (76%) and Total (24%) -- has been working with J P Kenny on concepts for the development since 2007. The FEED will require almost 200,000 man-hours of input and will produce defined solutions for the Subsea systems for the 850 km export pipeline.

Gerwyn Williams, Group Managing Director, J P Kenny said, "We are delighted to be engineering our fourth successive $multi-billion 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 want to capitalise on that expertise."

Phil Brown, Operations Director of J P Kenny 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."

The Ichthys Project is expected to have an initial capacity to produce more than eight million tonnes of LNG per annum, approximately 1.6 million tonnes of LPG per annum and 100,000 barrels of condensate per day, at peak. The first shipment of LNG is scheduled to be loaded in 2015.