Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (HHI) signed a contract with Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd. (EPNL), a Nigerian subsidiary of French oil company Total S.A., to build an oil and gas production platform worth US $520 m. The platform will be completed by 2010 and will be able to produce 105,000 barrels of oil and 3 million cubic meters of natural gas a day. It will be located in the Ofon field, which is in water 40 meters deep, 40 km southeast of Nigeria.

The platform will be operated by a joint venture between EPNL and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. HHI will carry out all phases of the project on a turnkey basis, from the engineering, procurement, and installation to the test runs and commissioning work.

“The platform weighs more than 13,000 tons and needs advanced technology to engineer, construct, and install its precise instruments. It is a significant project and shows HHI’s prominent position in the Nigerian market,” said an HHI representative.

HHI has received five orders in a row from Total since 2005, when it won the first AKPO FPSO order.