New billion dollar deal for Nailsea's biggest company

NAILSEA’S biggest employer is the benefit from a billion dollar contract for subsea energy supplies.

GE Oil & Gas is to benefit from a $1.1 billion global contract the company has won to supply power generation and subsea equipment to the giant Greater Gorgon gas field off the west coast of Australia.

The company's Nailsea site which has 450 staff will be supplying hi-tech production control systems to the Gorgon project, which is one of the world's largest untapped natural gas fields. 

GE Oil & Gas Nailsea site managing director Dean Arnison 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."

In October last year a new Subsea Monitoring and Remote Technology Centre (or SmartCentre) was opened at the site in Nailsea. 

GE Oil & Gas invested more than £3.2 million in this development and other projects at the site in 2009.  

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

Other GE Oil & Gas sites across the world will be supplying equipment to the project including  five 130 MW Frame-9 gas turbines, compression trains to power Gorgon's pioneering carbon dioxide sequestration project and other subsea control systems.  

The scope of work undertaken by GE Oil & Gas will total approximately 10,000 tonnes of structures and will represent one of the largest fabrication efforts in a subsea development project to date.

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