ACE Winches secures work on Shell’s Prelude FLNG

Deck machinery specialist, ACE Winches, has won a spooling contract with Oceaneering on the world’s largest offshore facility ever built, the Prelude FLNG facility, operated by Shell.

ACE said on Wednesday that this would be the first time that the newly developed 500 tonnes reel drive system is used. The tool is an upgrade of the existing 400 tonnes system that was engineered and manufactured at ACE Winches facilities in Aberdeenshire.

The scope of work will see ACE Winches spool 4400 meters of umbilical, with a diameter of 229mm onto a 12.2-meter reel. The weight of the umbilical is the heaviest Oceaneering has ever spooled with a total weight of 426 tonnes.

The product was developed for high tension spooling and the deployment and recovery of subsea products such as umbilicals, risers and flowlines, flexible pipelines, power cables, telecommunication cables, tubing, wire ropes and mooring lines.

Alfie Cheyne, CEO of ACE Winches, said: “We are thrilled to be utilizing our new 500te reel drive system for this contract with Oceaneering. We understand the need for this equipment to operate in harsh conditions and as a result, have developed it to ensure we are accommodating the ever growing needs of the oil and gas industry.”

ACE Winches also supplied ten commissioning engineers and technicians to assemble the ACE 500te reel drive system quayside, before operations started, with a further six operating technicians providing a 24 hour service to complete the first phase of spooling.

The patent-pending 500 tonnes system consists of two towers that disassemble into eight modules for easy transportation. The towers use a slave and master configuration, with two gearboxes in each drive hub.