Final Culzean jacket on its way to North Sea

A jacket for the utility & living quarter (ULQ) platform for the Maersk Oil-operated Culzean field is now on its way to the UK sector of the North Sea. 

This is the third and final jacket for the High Pressure High Temperature Culzean development. It set sail on Friday, July 7, shortly after the central processing facilities (CPF) jacket, which started its journey towards the North Sea field location on June 28. Prior to that, the wellhead platform jacket arrived at the field and was installed in May 2016.

Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) was in charge of the construction of the Culzean jackets for client Maersk Oil North Sea UK Limited.

After the execution of the procurement & construction contract for the Culzean wellhead platform jacket, the wellhead access deck and the access ways, Maersk Oil awarded HFG a second Culzean project in September 2015: the engineering, procurement & construction of the two jackets.

Fabrication

According to HFG, fabrication started in January 2016 and all locations of HFG were involved. HFG Engineering was responsible for the engineering of the grillage and sea fastening for the jackets and piles. HFG Polska built the jacket appurtenances and pre-fabricated the grillages and sea fastening. The fabrication of two pile sleeve clusters of the CPF jacket and the pre-assembly of half of the ULQ jacket leg parts were executed by Heerema Zwijndrecht, while the four pile sleeve clusters of the ULQ jacket and two pile sleeve clusters of the CPF jacket were constructed by Heerema Hartlepool.

At the Vlissingen yard, the two jackets were fabricated and assembled. Both jackets are approximately 115 meters high and have a foot print of 38 x 38 meters. The CPF jacket has a top of 24 x 30 meters and a weight of 8,388 metric tonnes. The top of the ULQ jacket is 24 x 24 meters and this jacket weighs 7,181 metric tonnes.

Once all the jackets are in place, the next step will be the arrival of topsides which will happen over the course of 2018.

“Thanks to the well-oiled cooperation between our specialized and integrated facilities in Hartlepool, Zwijndrecht, Opole and Vlissingen which combined their capacities for building two jackets together we managed to deliver a product that meets the highest quality standards,” states Koos-Jan van Brouwershaven, CEO of HFG.

Culzean

The Maersk Oil-operated Culzean field – discovered in 2008 – is situated in the British sector of the Central North Sea approximately 250 kilometres to the east of Aberdeen in license block 22/25a. The water depth is approximately 88 meters and the reservoir is located around 4,300 metres below sea level.

The overall Culzean development consists of a wellhead platform, a central processing facility platform and a separate utilities & living quarter platform. The platforms will be interconnected by two bridges, each approximately 100 meters in length. First gas is expected in 2019. The Culzean project has the potential to meet around 5% of the British gas consumption in 2020/21.