THE NEWS

According to Offshore Engineer, McDermott has been awarded a large-scale engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) contract by ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi national oil company, for work associated with increasing gas recovery and production from the Umm Shaif field. The publication describes the award using ADNOC's own classification of "mega contract," indicating a scope that falls within the upper tier of the operator's contracting framework.

Details on contract value, duration, and specific deliverables were not disclosed in the available reporting. The award covers work oriented toward enhanced gas recovery at Umm Shaif, a mature offshore field in the Arabian Gulf that ADNOC has been developing over several decades.

McDermott, which operates across offshore and onshore energy infrastructure markets, will serve as the EPCI contractor for the scope. No consortium partners or subcontractors were identified in the source material.

WHY IT MATTERS

For readers focused primarily on the Brazilian offshore market, the direct operational relevance of this award is limited. Umm Shaif is an Abu Dhabi asset, and the contracting parties — ADNOC and McDermott — are not central actors in Brazil's pre-sal development cycle. Brazilian relevance here is indirect, but it is not negligible.

The structural read of this award is about what large integrated EPCI scopes look like in 2026, and what that means for how operators and contractors are positioning themselves globally. EPCI contracts of this scale consolidate engineering, procurement, construction, and installation under a single contractor, concentrating execution risk and coordination responsibility. When a national oil company of ADNOC's scale opts for this model on a gas recovery project, it reinforces the continued appetite among major NOCs for integrated delivery rather than disaggregated work packages.

For Brazilian operators and their engineering supply chains, this matters as a market signal. Petrobras has historically used a mix of contracting models — from fully integrated EPCI to separated engineering and construction scopes — depending on asset type, technology risk, and local content obligations. The offshore gas infrastructure agenda in Brazil, which includes both associated gas handling on pre-sal FPSOs and dedicated gas development concepts, will require contractors with demonstrated EPCI capability at scale. Awards like this one contribute to the track record that contractors present when competing for Brazilian scopes.

McDermott's position in this award is worth noting from a market-structure perspective. The company has navigated a significant financial restructuring in recent years and has since worked to reestablish its presence in large offshore EPCI competitions. Securing a contract that ADNOC itself classifies at its highest tier represents a meaningful data point in that repositioning. For Brazilian procurement teams evaluating contractor prequalification, demonstrated execution on comparable international scopes is a standard reference criterion.

The gas angle is also relevant to Brazil's longer-term infrastructure agenda. Brazil's offshore gas monetization challenge — moving associated gas from deep-water FPSOs to shore without flaring or reinjection losses — requires engineering solutions that overlap with the gas recovery and processing work that ADNOC is pursuing at Umm Shaif. While the technical specifics differ, the underlying engineering disciplines — subsea compression, gas processing modules, offshore-to-shore transfer infrastructure — draw from the same contractor and technology pool. Activity levels in the Middle East affect the availability and pricing of that pool for Brazilian projects.

Finally, this award contributes to the broader picture of where NOC capital is flowing in the current cycle. ADNOC's continued investment in mature field gas recovery reflects a global pattern: national oil companies are extending the productive life of established assets rather than exclusively chasing greenfield development. This is a pattern that Petrobras is also navigating, particularly in its management of mature Campos Basin assets alongside its pre-sal growth agenda. The contracting models and contractor relationships being established in the Middle East today are likely to inform how similar work is structured in Brazil in the years ahead.

CONTEXT

McDermott has been active across multiple offshore regions and has pursued large EPCI scopes as a core part of its post-restructuring strategy. ADNOC, for its part, has been expanding its offshore production capacity across several fields, with gas development forming an increasingly prominent part of its portfolio strategy.

For the Brazilian market, the more immediate comparable reference is the ongoing wave of FPSO-related EPCI and EPC activity tied to Petrobras's pre-sal development program, where integrated contracting scopes of comparable complexity — though different in configuration — are regularly tendered and awarded.

Source: OFFSHORE ENGINEER