CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Italy’s Saipem has been awarded a contract in Equatorial Guinea worth $90-$100 million to build a 70 km subsea pipeline linking the Alen platform with the Punta Europa petrochemical hub, the oil ministry said on Thursday.

Gas deliveries from the project, operated by Noble Energy, are expected to begin in early 2021, Oil Minister Gabriel Obiang Lima said in a statement.

The pipeline will serve offshore gas fields and have a capacity for 950 million cubic feet of gas per day as Equatorial Guinea looks to extend the life of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production assets.

“We anticipate that this contract, which is being approved exceptionally under the given circumstances, will contribute immensely to improving the performance of local businesses and the creation of employment,” Obiang Lima said.

Equatorial Guinea, a small West African member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, derives more than 90% of its foreign revenue from oil and gas.

The pipeline forms part of plans to link various offshore gas fields to onshore LNG facilities and turn the island of Bioko into a gas processing hub.

Reporting by Wendell Roelf; editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jason Neely