Sail Away Ceremony for Prelude FLNG Turret Module Held in UAE

Drydocks World, a UAE-based maritime service provider today announced that His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation and Chairman of Emirates Group attended the ‘sail away’ ceremony to mark the start of delivery of the pioneering Prelude FLNG Turret Modules to the owner Shell.

The first Module, the bogie support structure, standing 22 metres high, with a diameter of 30 metres and weighing 1300 tonnes will be transported to Korea to integrate with the Prelude FLNG vessel. Other modules will soon follow.

The Prelude FLNG unit will be 488-metres long and when fully loaded will weigh more than 600,000 tonnes. It will be the largest structure ever sent to sea displacing as much water as a fleet of six aircraft carriers. The vessel is to work at the Prelude offshore field 200 kms from the Australian coast. The turret for Prelude FLNG is the biggest turret ever built and over 800 workers are engaged in its construction. The turret is being built in five modules which when put together will weigh in at 10,500 tons. The first steel cutting took place on May 5, 2012. The nearly 100-metre mooring turret is a vital element of the vessel and along with four groups of mooring chains and suction pile anchors will constitute the largest system in the world and help the vessel to remain stable in high velocity tropical cyclone territory.

His Excellency Khamis Juma Buamim, Chairman of Drydocks World and Maritime World said, “It is our proud privilege to welcome HH Sheikh Ahmed on this prestigious occasion. We are extremely excited to be part of a new era in offshore gas liquefaction which will lead the way for many new and challenging projects in the years to come. The turret is essentially the heart of the mooring system and is an engineering challenge which needed to be executed with great technical precision. It is a testimony to our enduring engineering capabilities and project management skills that we have achieved this on time and by adhering to the highest possible standards in safety, quality and environment. The project involved meticulous planning and technical finesse in implementation and we have succeeded in raising the bar in Operational Excellence through this project.”

“Such projects help us to take forward a process of changing mind sets and provide new challenges for the future. It helps us exemplify the driving thought behind the undying “Can Do” spirit of Dubai-“Don’t think past-Think future, Think opportunities”, which has formed the basis for our business and strategic outlook ” he added.

Drydocks World has extensive experience in building turret structures having built the internal turret for SBM Frade project, two external turrets for Saipem (installed on board FRSU Toscana and FPSO Firenze) and a smaller internal turret for BW Offshore.

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Press Release, September 24, 2013