Montara, located about 690km east of Darwin and 250km north-west of Western Australia's Kimberley coast, was the subject of intense scrutiny when a well control incident in August 2009 resulted in an uncontrolled release of oil and gas into the marine environment for 74 days.
While the failure was predominantly attributed to operator PTTEP, the incident triggered an inquiry which recommended a "single, independent body should be created and be made responsible for regulating the health and safety, well integrity and environmental management aspects of offshore petroleum operations".
Thus the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority was born in 2012.
Montara re-started production in the June 2013 and five years later it is full steam ahead, with PTTEP handing SPIE a contract to provide a team of instrument and controls engineers and EEHA inspectors.
They will provide planned and unplanned maintenance, identifying and optimising the instrument, controls, hazardous area and safeguarding systems using our experience and knowledge to deliver efficiencies and improvements to support production.
The Montara development comprises an unmanned well head platform, three horizontal production wells, one gas injection well and five subsea wells developing the Swift, Swift North, Swallow and Skua fields.
It also includes flowlines, risers and control umbilical connecting the WHP to a floating production storage and offloading, the Montara Venture.
The SPIE team will be based on the 750,000 barrel Montara Venture FPSO.
The contracts, which were due to start last month, will run for three years, which SPIE sees as an opportunity for it to provide the benefits of the systems and process efficiencies developed over the past 10 years to the Montara project.
SPIE Oil & Gas Services managing director Yves Company said he hopes the contracts are also a launching pad to grow his company's relationship with PTTEP into the future.
SPIE Plexal managing director Dean Paton has been driving the growth of the Australian business by focusing on specialist services.
"We are very happy to be working for PTTEP-AA to deliver our specialist brownfield services with a combination of engineers and technicians working together in the field," he said.
"We look forward to growing our footprint with PTTEP's assets in Australasia as well as in other regions by delivering system improvements and efficiencies to enhance production."
Globally, SPIE has 4000 employees of 70 different nationalities working in 22 countries in Europe, Africa, the Asia Pacific and Middle East, with services across four business major lines - well services and geosciences, engineering and projects services, asset support, and competency development.
