Bristol business nails £46million deal Down Under

The Nailsea base of an international engineering firm has won a £46 million share of a deal to supply equipment to Australia.

GE Oil & Gas is to benefit from a global contract worth £730 million in total to supply power generation and subsea equipment to the Greater Gorgon gas field off the northwest coast of Australia. The company's Nailsea site will be supplying high tech production control systems, worth £46 million, to the Gorgon project, which is one of the world's largest untapped natural gas fields.

Dean Arnison, Nailsea site managing director, GE Oil & Gas said: "We are delighted that GE advanced subsea control systems have been selected by Chevron for the Gorgon natural gas fields project, which will supply cleaner energy to markets in the Asia Pacific region.

"Our Nailsea site is a world centre of excellence and it's a credit to the local expertise we employ and the reliability of our advanced subsea controls equipment that we have been selected for this important project which is shaping the future supply of world energy. The contract win builds on our investment in Nailsea."

In October a new Subsea Monitoring and Remote Technology Centre (or SmartCentre) was opened at the site in Nailsea. GE Oil & Gas has invested more than £3.2 million in this development and other projects at the site.

The site also houses a subsea control systems manufacturing centre, which will produce the control technology for the Gorgon project.

More than 450 people work at the Nailsea site, all of who will be involved.

Sitting off the north coast of Western Australia, the Greater Gorgon gas fields are estimated to contain about 40 trillion cubic feet of gas – enough gas to power a city the size of Dublin for 800 years.