A Fife plant has been awarded a £30m contract to build subsea equipment for BP’s drilling operations in the North Atlantic.

Rosyth dockyard operator Babcock was awarded the contract, which will see it build new structures for the oil fields west of Shetland.

The contract includes the building of 74 subsea structures for the Schiehallion and Loyal fields and is thought to have secured 100 jobs.

The fields have produced nearly 400m barrels of oil since production began in 1998. The new facilities are expected to extend production up until 2035.

The project will involve upgrading and replacing subsea facilities and replacing the existing floating, production, storage and offloading vessel. The new vessel will be able to process and export up to 130,000 barrels of oil a day.

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Work is due to begin in March.

Mike Pettigrew, managing director of future business for Babcock, said: "While our commitment and focus on the delivery of the Queen Elizabeth Class programme remains unchanged, this project presents us with excellent opportunities to enhance the utilisation of our facilities and resources here on the Forth.

"This is a multi-faceted technical programme which will sustain over 100 positions and provide training and development opportunities here at Rosyth.

"In addition, we will continue to involve our apprentices in exciting and specialised areas of our operations, strengthening the skills base of our next generation of engineers."

Andrew Train, BP's Quad 204 offshore programme director said: "We are looking forward to working collaboratively with Babcock and safely delivering high quality and reliable subsea structures which will help to extend the field life of the Schiehallion and Loyal fields."

(IT)