Heerema’s heavy lift vessel carrying ‘engineering marvel’ to enhance production from Ichthys

Inpex Australia, a subsidiary of Japan’s oil and gas player Inpex, has confirmed the setting of the stage for a miles-long journey, which the Netherlands-based offshore contractor Heerema Marine Contractors and its heavy lift vessel will undertake to bring a liquefied natural gas (LNG) booster compression module (BCM) from Indonesia to Australian waters, where it will be installed to augment production from a subsea reservoir at Inpex’s offshore energy project.

Heerema’s Sleipnir vessel was hired in February 2022 to install the module on the Ichthys Explorer central processing facility (CPF), as part of the Ichthys LNG Phase 2 development off the northwest coast of Western Australia.

Saipem got a contract in 2020 to conduct the booster compression module front-end engineering and design (FEED) services for the Inpex-operated Ichthys LNG energy development. Following FEED services for the BCM, McDermott was hired in November 2021 for an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) part of the project.

According to Inpex, the 4,800-tonne Ichthys LNG BCM departed the PTMI fabrication yard in Batam, Indonesia, last week to embark on its final voyage after two years of construction. The company underlined that the BCM was lifted and securely placed on Heerema’s Sleipnir with great precision.

The action set the stage for the vessel’s 1,638 nautical mile voyage to the Ichthys Explorer CPF for what is described as “a record lift” from one floating facility to another to install the BCM in a single lift, extending the production plateau of the field, which is estimated to contain over 12 trillion cubic feet of gas and 500 million barrels of condensate.

While describing the BCM as an “engineering marvel,” Davinder Manku, Vice President of Development Projects, emphasized: “With over 4 million workhours completed at the fabrication yard without LTI, this outstanding safety performance and collaboration is thanks to the dedication of Inpex Phase 2b, McDermott and Baker Hughes teams.

“The BCM will boost our production efficiency by enhancing recovery from the Ichthys reservoir. Once lifted onto the CPF, our brownfields integration teams will continue the critical work required to hook up the module throughout 2025, while we continue to safely produce.”

Located about 220 kilometers offshore Western Australia and 820 kilometers southwest of Darwin, the Ichthys field covers an area of around 800 square kilometers in water averaging depths of around 250 meters. An 890-kilometer pipeline exports gas and condensate from the field to onshore facilities for processing near Darwin. 

The Ichthys project produces up to 9.3 million tonnes of LNG and 1.65 million tonnes of LPG per annum, along with more than 100,000 barrels of condensate per day at peak. Gas from the field in the Browse Basin undergoes preliminary processing offshore to remove water and extract condensate, before being channeled into the trunkline in the Asia Pacific.

Saipem’s scope of work, under an EPCI contract consisted of the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation of an 889 km, 42-inch subsea pipeline, in water depths of up to 275 meters, connecting the offshore central processing facility to the onshore processing facility in Darwin.

Ichthys LNG joint venture is formed by Inpex (operator with a 67.82% interest), major partner TotalEnergies (26%), and the Australian subsidiaries of CPC Corporation Taiwan (2.625%), Osaka Gas (1.2%), Kansai Electric Power (1.2%), JERA (0.735%), and Toho Gas (0.42%).