Heerema Fabrication Group’s Vlissingen fabrication yard has completed the fabrication of two jackets for the Golden Eagle Development project of Nexen Petroleum UK Ltd.
With the departure of Nexen’s 6,400-ton PUQ (Production Utilities Quarters) jacket from the Heerema Vlissingen facility at the end of July, Heerema Fabrication Group has completed the fabrication project of the two jackets for the Golden Eagle Development project.
The 6,500-ton wellhead jacket sailed from Heerema Vlissingen to its offshore destination on 24 May. On 10 June, it was installed at the Golden Eagle Field location in the UK sector of the North Sea, about 43mi. (70km) northeast of Aberdeen.
Heerema Fabrication Group won the contract for parallel fabrication of two jackets and piles for the Golden Eagle Development project in October 2011. Fabrication of the jackets, both with a length of 130m and a footprint of 45m x 45m, started in February 2012. It is the first time that Heerema Vlissingen fabricated two large jackets at the same time, in only 18 months.
“Building two jackets simultaneously of this size is a logistic challenge to get everything prepared and on schedule. Jacket construction requires a lot of hoisting and building in parallel [that] results in increasing lifting activities in our Vlissingen yard. Thanks to our dedicated and experienced people we have successfully completed the construction timely and without any Lost Time Incidents over a total of 400,000 man-hours. An achievement for a challenging project of this complexity and fabricated in a very short period,” says Wim Matthijssen, Chief Operating Officer of Heerema Fabrication Group.
The Golden Eagle development, a £2 billion (US$3.09 billion) investment (£750 million or US$1.85 billion net to Nexen), is expected to produce an estimated 140 MMboe (gross) of proved and probable reserves over an 18-yr period. First oil production is forecast for late 2014 and the development is expected to have an initial gross production rate of up to 70,000boe/d (about 26,000 boe/d net to Nexen).
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