A&P TYNE is building on its success in a new business sector with the completion of yet another subsea structure for an offshore oil and gas field.
The Mid Water Arch – used to support control cables as they rise from the seabed to the surface – left the ship repair and fabrication yard at Hebburn, bound for a North Sea oil field.
For the last six months, 50 men worked daily on the project to cut, shape and weld the shell-like structures wrapped around two pressurised buoyancy cylinders. The entire structure is built in steel and the yard also built the gravity base, clump weights and piles that will secure it to the seabed, weighing a massive 600 tonnes altogether.
The subsea arch is headed for the Athena Development in the Outer Moray Firth, which will be operated by Ithaca Energy. The field is expected to produce around 22,000 barrels of oil per day once production starts.
It is the second such order secured by A&P, earlier this year it completed two buoyant subsea structures for an African offshore oil field.
Project director Iain Campbell said: “ This job was totally different in that the Athena arch is supported by pressurised steel cylinders as opposed to the polymer buoyancy units the earlier subsea arches were built around.
[mappress] Source: ap-group, August 16, 2011;