OREANDA-NEWS. BP announced that it, and its partners, have now awarded over ?1 billion in contracts to UK-based companies to provide services and equipment for the major re-development of the Schiehallion and Loyal oil fields to the west of Shetland.

The project to redevelop the fields, which are operated by BP on behalf of its partners, involves two main elements: a brand new floating production, storage and offloading vessel and a major upgrade of the subsea infrastructure that will lie on the seabed.

The latest in a series of awards has been made to OneSubsea which has been awarded a ?65 million contract to manufacture subsea trees at the company's facility in Leeds. This follows awards during 2012 and 2013 to companies based in Aberdeen, Fife, the Wirral, Newcastle, Leicester, Bristol, Shetland and many other UK locations. (See map below)

Trevor Garlick, BP's Regional President for the North Sea, said “The UK-based subsea engineering industry offers great expertise and capability and is fully engaged in developing highly-advanced equipment that will ensure we maximise recovery from this field until 2035 and beyond. It is great to see more than 30 companies from all parts of the UK working together to contribute towards this important offshore project.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “As I saw for myself at the Offshore Europe conference in Aberdeen last week, Britain's oil and gas industry continues to thrive. Its expertise and innovation is impressive.

“Employing over 400,000 people and providing the majority of our energy needs, the Government's industrial strategy will help keep this important sector growing.

“An important part of the strategy is reenergising the British supply chain. I want to create the conditions for the SMEs across the country to flourish in a highly-competitive global market. So it's encouraging that the UK supply chain have played a major role in the development of BP's Quad 204 project and I hope more will follow.”

OneSubsea will manufacture 11 “Xmas Trees” for the Schiehallion re-development. Fixed to the wellhead of a completed well, subsea trees are used on offshore oil and gas fields to monitor and control the production of a subsea well; they can also manage fluids or gas injected into the well.