Offshore staff
CONSTANTA, Romania – GSP Offshore has installed the steel platform jacket for the latest phase of TPAO’s Akcakoca development in the Turkish Black Sea.
The 1,300-metric ton (1,433-ton), 101-m (331-ft) long structure was fabricated at GSP’s yard near Constanta. Preparatory operations included planning, implementation, and qualification of the transport and installation procedures; qualification of welding procedures and testing/certification of offshore welders; jacket buoyancy calculations; and lifting equipment certification.
Once the jacket was delivered to the offshore location by the GSP Bigfoot 2, buoyancy bags were removed followed by controlled flooding of the jacket legs with the support of a Triton XLX ROV. The structure then was lowered onto a drilling template that had been pre-installed on the sea bed by divers.
For this operation, GSP mobilized over 350 offshore specialists and a fleet of technical and support vessels, including: GSP Bigfoot 3, an accommodation and work barge for offshore operations, GSP Neptun, a heavy-lift crane (1,800 metric tons, or 1,984 tons), the GSP Bigfoot 2 semisubmersible heavy lift transport barge, the GSP Queen ROV support vessel, GSP Licorn supply ship, and the P4 flat-top ocean going transport barge.
Within 20 days, the jacket is due to be fixed and reinforced during the piling operation.
GSP Bigfoot 3 installed the template in June. The existing template was removed, and then divers installed new subsea template pin piles. For this operation, the barge was assisted by the platform supply vessels GSP Licornand GSP Orion.
The new template was fabricated in GSP Shipyard. It was sea fastened onboard the technical vessel and transported to the location in the western part of the Black Sea.
07/09/2010
