Offshore services firm Allseas has awarded a contract to a joint venture of marine contractor DEME and Van Oord to support the Darwin Pipeline Duplication Project offshore Northern Australia.

Proposed by Santos, the Darwin Pipeline Duplication Project will enable gas transportation from the Barossa gas field in the Timor Sea, Northern Territory (NT) water to the Darwin liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

The gas pipeline will be approximately 100km in NT waters and will duplicate a section of the current Bayu-Undan pipeline. It will also include a shore crossing at Wickham Point in the Greater Darwin Area.

Under the latest contract, the JV will provide support for the shallow water pipeline installation scope in NT waters.

The JV will also undertake works such as trenching, pipe pull operations, and preparing the shore crossing at the landfall location close to the Santos-operated Darwin LNG plant.

The scope of work also includes rock placement to safeguard the pipeline project, using a fallpipe vessel.

DEME and Van Oord will deploy a cutter suction dredger, trailing suction hopper dredger, and backhoe dredger to support work for the project.

The firms plan to start project preparations with immediate effect.

DEME Offshore managing director Hugo Bouvy said: “DEME is delighted to be returning to Australia. We already have extensive experience through important projects like Wheatstone and Gladstone.

“DEME and Van Oord both have large fleets of modern equipment, which enables us to choose the most suitable vessels, and to give our client Allseas a flexible and efficient solution.”

Allseas Marine Contractors Australia was selected as the engineering, procurement and construction and installation (EPCI) contractor in 2019 for the gas export pipeline from the Barossa offshore gas and light condensate project to the existing Darwin LNG facility.