French firm Technip will lay the world's deepest gas pipeline for energy giant Shell in the US Gulf of Mexico, the oil services company said in a statement on Friday.

This was the second big announcement by Technip in 10 days concerning deep-sea pipelaying.

In the latest statement, the company said it was awarded "an important engineering, procurement and installation contract for the development of subsea infrastructure for the Stones field," at a depth of approximately 2,900 metres (9,500 feet).

The project will be the deepest floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit in the world and Shell's first in the Gulf of Mexico, Technip said, without specifying how much the contract was worth.

"With the award of this high-profile project, Technip confirms its subsea leadership and keeps differentiating itself through innovation to remain at the forefront of frontier projects," Technip's Senior Vice President for North America Savid Dickson said.

On August 12, Technip said that with Norwegian shipping group DOF it had won contracts worth 1.35 billion euros ($1.8 billion) involving the construction of the biggest pipe-laying ships of their type for Brazil.

Technip said that they had won eight contracts from Brazilian oil group Petrobras to lay flexible pipelines at great depth.

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TECHNIP

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