JKC Australia LNG has awarded the contract to a joint venture of UGL and EPC firm CH2M Hill for the construction of a combined cycle power plant for the Ichthys liquefied natural gas project in the Northern Territory, Australia. JKC Australia is a joint venture of JGC Corporation, KBR and Chiyoda Corporation. The contract is worth $900 million in all, with $560 million going to the CH2M-UGL joint venture which will design and supply the balance of plant based around the GE technology, and undertake the complete construction of the project.
GE will engineer and supply gas turbines, steam turbines and heat recovery steam generators for the $34 billion project based at Blaydin Point, Darwin. The plant will produce more than 8 million tons of LNG per year. The onshore facility will be linked to the offshore drilling and processing facilities in the Browse Basin off Western Australia by an 885 km undersea pipeline.
This contract win follows on from the successful installation of the Tamar Valley combined cycle plant by UGL in 2009 and the Darling Downs CCGT completed by GE and CH2M HILL in 2010.
GE will supply five GE Frame 6B gas turbines and three SC4 single-flow steam turbines providing 500 MW of installed power capacity for the facility. Design, procurement and fabrication for the power plant works are expected to commence immediately, with an on-site commencement in mid-2013 and completion expected by the end of 2016. The steam turbines will be manufactured in the US before being shipped to Italy for testing in 2013 and then to Australia for installation. The gas turbines are to be manufactured in Belfort, France.
In January this year GE Oil & Gas announced it had been awarded contracts totalling nearly $1 billion to supply a wide range of rotating equipment and subsea production systems for the Ichthys LNG project.
