UK-based company Wood Group will provide engineering and planning services for the production platform of Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL), through which gas will flow to Israel from the Tamar gas field. The order is worth an estimated tens of millions of dollars.

The production platform, whose overall cost is close to a billion dollars, is to be built close to the existing Mary-B Yam Tethys platform. The decision to build the platform came after the planning committees suspended the plan to build a northern gas terminal near Dor Beach.

As a result, the cost of developing the Tamar field rose from $2.8 to $3 billion dollars, and the starting date for gas flow was delayed from the last quarter of 2012 to the second quarter of 2013. The gas from Tamar will be produced by an under-water system, which will be layed on the Mediterranean Sea bed at a depth of 1500 meters. The gas will flow through two 30-inch diameter pipes for 150 km to the production platform. From there, the gas will flow to the terminal in Ashdod through pipes that have been used for conveying gas from Mary-B since 2004.

This is the second important infrastructure project that the concern Wood Group has been awarded in Israel. Wood Group was chosen to construct the Dorad Power Plant, a project worth $800 million. Wood Group GTS, the company's gas turbine services unit, is implementing the project, under the management of Shlomo Cohen.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 7, 2011

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