DRAGADOS OFFSHORE WILL BUILD THE BIGGEST OIL DRILLING VESSEL OF THE WORLD IN THE BAY OF CADIZ

It will be the first vessel with capacity to drill, produce and store crude oil simultaneously.

Dragados offshore Cdiz, October 5th, 2007.

 Dragados Offshore, S.A., which is part of the Industrial service area of the ACS Group, will build the biggest vessel containing drilling, process and oil storage facilities of the world in its Yard of Puerto Real (Cadiz), for the Norwegian company MPF Corp. This pioneering project will imply work load for this company until the end of the year 2009.

Dragados Offshore will be in charge of the detailed engineering, procurement, fabrication and installation onto the hull of the vessel of the necessary equipment and facilities, from the drilling modules to those of generation, including the installation of the propulsion equipment and the execution of all the necessary commissioning tests of all the systems and the sea trials.

To be able to undertake this new Contract, Dragados Offshore is carrying out the necessary works for the construction of a new quay of 300 meters length, and a depth of 12 meters in its yard of the Bay of Cadiz; which will enable the mooring and berthing of the vessel, whose hull is being built in Dalian (China), from where it will be towed to Puerto Real (Cadiz) once completed by September of 2008.

This drilling and production vessel will have a length of 300 meters, a breath of 50 meters and a depth of 27 meters, as well as capacity to store 1.000.000 of barrels of crude oil. The company MPF, which anticipates to manufacture additional new units in the future, requires to have enough capacity to operate at any location of the world, even in the most adverse climatologies (as the ones in the Arctic waters), by means of a hull and relevant facilities specially designed for temperatures of 30 below zero.

The construction of the vessel in Cadiz will require approximately 3 million working hours; which will request the employment of an average of 1.000 workers during the development of the project and up to 2.000 during the peaks of the construction phase.

The MPF-01 vessel is an alternative to the traditional permanent offshore fixed platforms. It will be mainly used for the development of offshore fields of oil and gas located into deep waters and in adverse climatologies, with capacity to maintain by means of a dynamic positioning system, a fixed location without being anchored and thus drilling, producing, storing and unloading crude oil simultaneously.


This new contract represents for Dragados Offshore a new challenge, since MPF-01 Project is currently the most emblematic project being developed at this moment in the offshore market. It is the first time that a vessel of these characteristics is being built, with capacity for drilling as well as for producing and storing crude oil, since until now there were no vessels that could carry out all these tasks: either they drill or they process, store and unload.

Building this Project also represents the entrance into two sectors of the offshore market which in these moments are basic for the development of the oil and the gas industry: the floating production units and the drilling units in deep waters (considering that the oil fields in shallow water commence to be exhausted).


Currently, Dragados Offshore is building in Cadiz for Exxon Mobil, Qatar Gas and Edison Gas the project Adriatic LNG, a regasification plant of natural gas of 12.000 tons being installed onto a gravity concrete base that, once completed at the end of the year, will be sea-towed and installed close to the coast of Venice (Italy).


This plant is the first one in the world onto a concrete base to be installed at sea; and more than 2.000 people are working in its construction in both Puerto Real and Algeciras locations. It is being sea transported into several modules to the dry dock in the Port of Algeciras, where the concrete gravity base is being built; and from where the whole Terminal will leave in the summer of 2008 toward its final destiny.



With the awarding of this new MPF01 Project, Dragados Offshore confirms its excellent position, not only as a builder of offshore production plants but also as a builder of floating drilling units, continuing with the way undertaken by the execution of the Snohvit Project. The natural gas liquefaction plant Snohvit (developed by Dragados Offshore for the oil company Statoil of Norway) is the first one of its characteristics carried out in the world, and it was built in just two years in the Yard of Puerto Real, and sea transported in the summer of 2005 to the island of Melkoya in Norway (inside the Arctic Polar Circle), to be connected to the Offshore Gas fields.

The MPF-01 in figures


- More than 17.000 tons in modules and integrated facilities
- Capacity to drill in deep waters up to 3.000 meters.
- Capacity to drill up to 10.000 well depth meters.
- Capacity to accommodate between 120 and 180 crew members in its 120 bedrooms.
- 8 electric generators of 7.200 MW
- 8 thrusters (4 in the bow and 4 in the stern) of 5.500 KW of power each one.