Clough will provide engineering, procurement and construction works for onshore facilities including gas processing trains, compressors and accommodation facilities for personnel.
The Devil Creek gas plant, to be located 65 kilometres southwest of Karratha in WA's Pilbara region, will include gas treatment/dehydration, condensate liquid stabilisation, storage and road load-out facilities, as well as gas compression and metering.
The site is also adjacent to the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline, to which it will be connected by a short sales gas pipeline.
Apache Energy Australia managing director Tim Wall said Devil Creek would eventually have the capacity to provide up to 300 terajoules per day into the DBNGP.
"Phase One will draw on Reindeer and will handle about 110 terajoules a day with some redundancy built in," Wall said.
"The Phase Two expansion will come soon after we sanction Julimar and that will process significantly more gas - up to an additional 300 terajoules a day.
"There's a lot of gas in the Julimar trend and we're doing a lot of drilling."
The final investment decision on Julimar was likely to be made late this year and construction on Phase Two would start soon afterwards, according to Wall. If all goes well, construction on Phase Two will start almost immediately after the completion of Phase One and will be completed in time for a 2011 start-up.
All gas produced from Devil Creek will service the WA domestic gas market, and this output will significantly bolster the security of supply and mitigate forecast gas supply shortfalls, Apache said.
The Devil Creek facility is also expected to produce 500 barrels of condensate per day.
Clough has had plenty of problems with recent contracts and chief executive John Smith was keen to emphasise that this unlikely to happen at Devil Creek.
"Apache and Clough have put considerable effort into agreeing the contract form to ensure alignment of objectives and an equitable balance of risk and reward," he said.
Clough performed front-end engineering design for the Reindeer and the Devil Creek offshore production facilities and the onshore gas plant, and the company was familiar with the Pilbara region, according to Smith.
The project is expected to be completed by early 2010.
