THE Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff has won a multi-million-pound contract to build a floating oil rig for British Petroleum (BP), according to media reports. The contract should be worth about £70 million sterling to the shipyard, which reported an operating loss of £22 million last year.

Harland & Wolff, which has 1,400 employees, has diversified into construction of floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels for the oil industry. Harland & Wolff was previously awarded the design contract for the vessel as part of a consortium with two British firms. The BP-owed FPSO will eventually be moored about 120 miles west of the Shetlands