Offshore staff
VLISSINGEN, the Netherlands -- Heerema Fabrication Group has completed construction and installation of a platform for the F3-FA gas field development in the Dutch North Sea.
Centrica Energy awarded Heerema Vlissingen the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation contract in February 2009. The platform is designed to be “self-installing” and portable, allowing it to be transferred to another location once production from the F3-FA field is complete.
HFG claims it is also the largest gas platform in the world of its type, with a total height of 133 m (436 ft), including 75-m (246-ft) long legs each weighing 1,200 metric tons (1,323 tons). The topsides weigh 4,000 metric tons (4,409 tons) and are 50 m (164 ft) wide, 30 m (98.4 ft) long and 30 m tall. The total weight of the platform is 8,800 metric tons (9,700 tons).
Frank Slagen, project manager at Vlissingen, said: “This unique platform is the largest to date ever built at our Vlissingen yard and has been fabricated in record-time of less than one year. It created approximately 1 million man hours of work for Heerema Vlissingen and its direct subcontractors.
“To successfully execute this project on time a large number of subcontractors were appointed, which created a challenge for project management to manage the entire scope with all its interfaces. Also thanks to our partners Iv-Oil & Gas and SPT Offshore, we succeeded to adapt the concept to a much larger scale for this platform.”
John Brusik, project manager Centrica Energy, added: “It has been an extremely challenging and phase-built design pushing several boundaries. It uses four huge five-story high suction buckets each big enough to hold more than 2.5 million liters (660,430 gal) of water to anchor it in position. The self-installed platform was towed more than 200 km (124 mi) from the Netherlands to the F3-FA field.”
The F3-FA field is in the north of the Dutch offshore sector, around 240 km (149 mi) north of Den Helder in a water depth of 40 m (131 ft). The field was initially discovered in the early 1970s.
09/08/2010
