Around 200 offshore jobs have been secured after international energy services firm Wood Group PSN was awarded a £140 million North Sea duty holder contract extension.
The new agreement with Ithaca Energy is a first for the company as it covers the entire operating life of the field rather than a defined service period.
The contract will see WGPSN deliver a range of managed services to the Beatrice offshore platforms and Nigg onshore terminals until such times as they are decommissioned.
Beatrice is the largest oilfield in the Inner Moray Firth area and has produced more than 171 million barrels of oil.
The platform and the onshore oil terminal at Nigg first came on stream in 1981 and were expected to have a 30-year lifespan.
However, that timeframe has already been exceeded thanks to a major asset life extension programme delivered by WGPSN over the last few years.
The new life-of-field contract extension, which secures the jobs of around 200 primarily offshore workers, marks the continuation of a working relationship between the two companies which stems back to 2008.
It comes just a month after WGPSN received a multi-million-dollar extension to its duty holder and asset management service contract for the Teekay PJ Hummingbird Spirit FPSO (floating production storage offloading) vessel which is sited in the Centrica-operated Chestnut field in the North Sea.
Dave Stewart, UK managing director of WGPSN, said: “We are delighted to receive this award and build on the excellent relationship we have developed with Ithaca over the past five years.
“This is our first life-of-asset contract globally and is reflective of our capability and expertise to deliver operations services and develop a programme for late-life asset management, taking these facilities through operations to the decommissioning phase when the time comes,” Mr Stewart added.
In the UK, Wood Group now employs more than 11,000 people working both onshore and offshore.