GE Oil & Gas today announced it has received a contract to provide a turnkey turbomachinery solution to Petrofac Emirates for the Upper Zakum UZ750 field in Abu Dhabi, developed by ZADCO (Zakum Development Company).

The turbomachinery equipment will be delivered in the form of massive, standalone, plug-and-play “modules,” which will ship intact from GE’s advanced construction facility in Avenza, Italy, to an artificial island located 50 miles offshore of Abu Dhabi. Each module will weigh more than 1,500 tons and be 44 meters long, 20 meters wide and 24 meters high. These six “mega structures” will serve as the housing in which a turbogenerator train is located that will provide electric power to ZADCO’s oil production facilities, including pumps and gas compressors, also on the island.

The advanced module design was most recently deployed during the construction of five massive systems developed for Australia’s Gorgon field, one of the largest and most complex gas fields in the world. Like those made for Gorgon, these modules will be assembled, commissioned and tested ahead of shipment to the Emirates so that once they arrive on location they can be simply and quickly installed and ready for operation. The module design and enhanced testing is advantageous to customers as it reduces the total footprint of operations as well as reduces the amount of time between equipment delivery and startup of operation, minimizing execution risks at site.

The modules, which integrate core equipment with all relevant auxiliary systems in an engineered solution, are delivered to the customer fully connected and wired. These six power generation modules, in turn, each feature a 43-megawatt, rugged and reliable GE 6B gas turbine and electric generators that are fully engineered, equipped, packaged and tested. World-class reliability and availability make the 6B gas turbine a popular choice for industrial and oil and gas customers seeking cost-effective, highly reliable power. More than 1,200 6B gas turbines are installed worldwide, with 65 million operating hours in a wide range of applications.

“Whether it’s GE’s unique expertise in the development of these massive plug-and-play modules, our advanced LNG technologies or our work in subsea fields, GE is actively supporting some of the world’s largest natural gas projects,” said Rafael Santana, CEO and president, Turbomachinery Solutions for GE Oil & Gas. “This latest contract marks a critically important achievement for our industrial modules Power Generation business by showcasing how advanced plug-and-play solutions are solving some of the world’s most complex energy challenges in remote locations. The new work also underscores our commitment to investing in our advanced Module Construction Yard located in Avenza, Italy—the same yard where the Gorgon modules were born and built.”

To support the ZADCO project, GE is expanding the Avenza yard by adding more assembly and testing capabilities. When this more than $12 million investment is completed at the end of 2014, the GE Module Construction Yard will cover 140,000 square meters—having grown by almost four times its original 40,000-sqm size in 2011. The finished yard will have enough platform foundations to assemble 10 modules at the same time, underscoring GE’s commitment to providing industrial module solutions for the oil and gas industry.

The contract award is between GE and Petrofac Emirates, the EPC contractor selected by ZADCO for the Upper Zakum UZ750 field development in Abu Dhabi. ZADCO is an Abu Dhabi National Oil Company subsidiary in which ExxonMobil and Japan Oil Development Company also are shareholders.

“Since 1985, we have designed, constructed and delivered more than 40 modules and pre-assembled units of various sizes to customers around the world,” said Davide Iannucci, Turbomachinery Solutions Project Operations general manager. “To accomplish this—and to create modular units of this large size—we have invested significant resources in the research, development and engineering of these solutions. The result is increased efficiency and reliability for our turnkey solutions, whether it’s for small projects or ones involving immense scale such as ZADCO’s.”

The assembly of the ZADCO modules in Avenza (Italy) will start at the end of 2014 and will be completed in approximately 2.5 years. The modules will be shipped to Abu Dhabi in 2016.

GE’s Turbomachinery Module Solutions provide an integrated engineering approach at the system level, maximized prefabrication activities that enable reduced on-site installation, construction and testing requirements, commissioning and start-up services.