Keppel Shipyard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Keppel Offshore & Marine has secured contracts from repeat customers amounting to S$150 million for the upgrading, modification and conversion of two vessels.

Work on the vessels is expected to commence in October 2008.

Mr Nelson Yeo, Executive Director of Keppel Shipyard said, “We are pleased to again be entrusted with new projects from owners who have worked with us before. We will continue strengthen our partnership, providing safe and high quality services, especially in the current tight market conditions.”

The first contract is from Single Buoy Moorings Inc (SBM), for the upgrading and conversion of a tanker into a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO). This will be the tenth FPSO conversion project that Keppel has undertaken for SBM since 2000.

To be converted from the 255,272 dwt VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) MT Accord, the spread-moored P-57 FPSO will be capable of producing 180,000 bopd and undertake gas compression of 71 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmscf/d).

Keppel Shipyard’s scope of work includes the hull and marine conversion, spread mooring aids installation, accommodation block extensions/refurbishment, fabrication & installation of marine pipe rack, topside module supports as well as part of the topside modules installation.

To be supplied in a fixed lumpsum contract by SBM to Petrobras SA, the vessel is expected to leave Keppel Shipyard in the fourth quarter of 2009 for Brazil where the remaining work will be completed, which will account for 65% of the whole project. The vessel will subsequently be deployed in the deepwater Jubarte field in the Campos Basin.

The second contract is from Golar LNG, for the conversion of Golar Winter (VT1), a Membrane Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Carrier into a Floating Storage Re-gasification Unit (FSRU). This comes on the back of Keppel Shipyard’s recent delivery of the world’s first FSRU Golar Spirit (VT2) to Golar LNG.

The scope of work includes the installation of a re-gasification plant system, the upgrade of control systems, electrical systems and marine systems.

When completed in the second quarter of 2009, the FSRU Golar Winter will be capable of re-gasifying 14 million cubic metres of natural gas per day. Like the Golar Spirit, it will be operated by Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras SA, and moored at a pier in the Guanabara Bay, off Rio de Janeiro. Golar Spirit has been moored at the Port of Pecem, northeast of Brazil.