Last month, the topsides for GDF Suez’s E17a-A platform sailed out of Schiedam to its destination in the Dutch North Sea. Fabricator HSM Steel Structures had dispatched the jacket a few weeks earlier, in line with its contractual obligations.
The platform will serve as a new gas production center in the E quadrant. According to Edwin Prinse, HSM’s manager, Sales & Business Development, the operator had specified separate installations for the two structures. This was due to the limited availability this summer of the installation vessel, theStanislav Yudin, and the associated risk of an insufficient weather window for a dual lift.
HSM was therefore obliged to contract two barges for the deliveries. The project ran smoothly, Prinse says. "It was more or less a carbon copy of the K2 BA platform we had supplied two years earlier to Gaz de France.
"The design, handled by IV Oil and Gas, was complete when the project started. This was good, because it meant that the client could order long-lead items from a very early stage. GDF Suez also subcontracted engineering to IV – our contract was for construction only, plus transportation and installation of the barge alongside the heavy-lift vessel."
Earlier this year, another new HSM platform was installed on the Jacky oil field in the Outer Moray Firth in the UK central North Sea. Jacky is the first operated development for Calgary-based Ithaca Energy: production from the minimum facility wellhead platform is exported through a 16-in. (40.6-cm) pipeline to the Beatrice A platform, also operated by Ithaca.
The Jacky wellhead platform loaded ahead of installation.
"Ithaca came up with challenging (EPIC) tender specifications in November 2007, including a short project schedule and installation in late-December 2008. Winter time in the North Sea is not an ideal period for heavy-lift vessel availability."
Jacky’s location is close to the Scottish east coast. Earlier in 2008, HSM had successfully installed a jacket and topside for a wind farm, each weighing 1,000 metric tons (1,102 tons), close to the Danish maritime border using the sheerleg bargeMatador 3.
"Together with our engineering subcontractor IV Oil & Gas," Prinse explains, "we developed a platform for Jacky with a suction pile foundation to allow installation via a sheerleg from Invergordon, Scotland, or from a heavy-lift vessel. This worked quite nicely; within one year, we completed basic and detailed design, procurement, construction, and installation." Jacky came on stream this March.
Currently, the yard in Schiedam is working on the K5CU satellite platform and jacket for Total E&P Nederland, which will have a total weight of over 2,000 metric tons (2,204 tons), including piles. This is an EPC contract, with the jacket due to sail out in April 2010, followed three months later by the topsides. "We have a track record of never being late for any delivery anywhere," says Prinse.
