With three out of four phases already done, Van Oord, a Dutch marine contractor, is planning to embark on the last segment of its assignment in the fourth quarter of 2025 at a field off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Van Oord’s scope of work at Cenovus Energy ’s West White Rose project is divided into four phases, encompassing seabed preparation, solid ballasting activities, scour protection, and flowline protection. During the first phase, completed in September 2024, the Dutch player installed a seabed preparation layer that serves as the foundation for the concrete gravity structure (CGS).
According to the company, the installation required strict adherence to client specifications and involved extensive planning, material testing, rigorous quality control of quarried rock, full-scale trials, and the expertise of a highly qualified and committed project team, along with the vessel crew of Stornes , which was deployed for the task.
The second phase of the project saw Van Oord carry out solid ballasting of the CGS to ensure sufficient weight for seabed stability once positioned, as the structure’s design required a high degree of accuracy. The firm’s Nordnes and Stornes flexible fallpipe vessels approached the CGS simultaneously using dynamic positioning (DP), with one vessel on each side.
These vessels, constantly positioned 180 degrees from each other while moving around the CGS to fill all 24 compartments evenly, inserted MagnaDense (iron ore) into the CGS’s outer ring compartments, using boom belt-conveyors. The Dutch player elaborates that ballasting operations were meant to prepare the CGS before its tow-out.
As the CGS, which is 145 meters tall and supports an integrated drilling and production topside, has been positioned on top of the seabed preparation layer that was previously installed, Van Oord deployed its Nordnes flexible fallpipe vessel to install a protective scour edge around it in the third phase of the project to mitigate the effects of seabed erosion.
As a result, the final phase, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2025, will involve stabilizing the pipelines from the drilling platform on the seabed. Upon completion, the platform will be able to be put into operation mode.
Hans Smit , Project Manager at Van Oord, commented: “Van Oord has proven that it can execute a project of this complexity according to the highest standards. It has been successful thanks to excellent collaboration with both our client and across the entire team, as well as our skilled people and our fantastic equipment and automation.”
The West White Rose project, which is an expansion of the White Rose field, is located in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin, approximately 350 kilometers off the east coast of Newfoundland. This project consists of a fixed drilling platform situated on a custom-designed CGS with a base diameter of 122 meters.
Van Oord has been busy lately, as illustrated by the start of its dredging assignment to prepare the site where Poland’s floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) will be stationed as part of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Gulf of Gdańsk.