ALE is approaching the final stages of its load-out operations for the Upper Zakum 750 Island Surface Facilities (UZ750) Project, based 84km offshore, northwest of Abu Dhabi, UAE.
The heavy lifting contractor secured the scope to deliver almost 100 different modules to the north, south, central and west islands of the Zakum oil field. The modules consist of a variety of pipe racks, process modules, buildings and substations, weighing between 120 –4700-tonne and some modules measuring over 50m long. ALE is contracted to delivered these from various fabrication yards in the Arabian Gulf to the project site on the artificial Zakum islands.
ALE will be using a variety of different techniques, including engineering, weighing, land and marine transportation, load-ins, load-outs and installations. Furthermore, ALE will be utilizing a range of transport equipment including weightors, self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs), conventional trailers and external/internal ballast systems.
Operations commenced in October 2015 and since then, ALE has delivered all 29 modules offshore to the south island and 38 modules out of 40 for the north island, with the final 26 awaiting delivery for the west island.
During this project, ALE has used 40 - 252 axle lines of SPMT to perform the transportation and load-out operations, making it one of the largest amount of axle lines ALE has used in one project.
The UZ750 project is currently under construction offshore in Abu Dhabi. The project involves the construction of four artificial islands, the central island will house the processing facilities and north, west and south islands will act as satellite platforms. The oil field is set to increase the overall oil production capacity of the UAE by 750,000 bo/d in 2017, which will be sustainable for 25 years.
“The challenging scope of transporting such heavy and abnormally-sized loads by land and sea has meant that we are combining different techniques and equipment,” said Sachin Kumar, project engineer, ALE. “During the project, ALE has set very high standard of safety whilst showcasing our turnkey capabilities. As we progress with the project, we look to continue these standards and we are on schedule to complete the delivery of all items in the next few months.”
The final portion of modules for the west island are remaining and the project is expected to finish mid-2017.
Image: ALE performing the load-out of a pipe rack, weighing 902-tonne, in Jebel Ali, Dubai, as part of the Upper Zakum EPC2 Project/ALE
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