Aker Solutions shares lifted by $2.4 billion Total contract

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's Aker Solutions has won a 14 billion crown (1.41 billion pounds) contract from oil major Total to provide equipment at the Kaombo oil project off Angola, lifting its shares by nearly 6 percent. The oil equipment and services company will provide a subsea production installation to enable extraction of oil and gas at the offshore field, it said on Tuesday. Aker was the biggest gainer on the Oslo benchmark index <.OSEBX>, up 5.8 percent by 0737 GMT, against a 0.5 percent rise for the index. The contract value was higher than expected, Norwegian bank DNB said. "We had expected the contract to be worth 10 billion crowns," it said in its morning report. "At the end of 2013, the firm had an order book of 42 billion crowns. This contract will help hold the book-to-bill ratio over 1x for this year." The first deliveries are scheduled for the second quarter of 2015, Aker Solutions said. Total said on Monday that it is pressing ahead with the deepwater project after cutting its cost to $16 billion from $20 billion after repeated delays. (Reporting by Gwladys Fouche and Camilla Knudsen; Editing by David Goodman)