Culzean wellhead jacket sets sail

The wellhead jacket and the access deck have set sail from the Netherlands and are headed for Maersk Oil’s ultra high pressure, high temperature Culzean development in the UK North Sea.

Heerema Fabrication Group (HFG) announced the completion of both projects. The wellhead jacket departed its Heerema Vlissingen facility today (13 April), while the wellhead access deck departed the facility two days ago. Upon arrival, HFG will perform the installation of the two.

Maersk’s Culzean project, which has the potential to meet around 5% of the UK gas consumption in 2020/21, is situated in the UK sector of the Central North Sea, some 250km east of Aberdeen in license block 22/25a. Culzean is in 88m water depth, with its reservoir located approximately 4300m below sea level.

The Culzean development consists of a wellhead platform, a central processing facility platform and a separate utilities and living quarter platform with capacity for more than 100 people. The platforms will be linked via two bridges about 100m in length, with first gas currently expected in 2019. Plateau production is expected to be in the range of 300-450 MMscf/d, and 25,000 b/d condensate.

“This is the first jacket for the Culzean field. It is a twisted base jacket, which means that the bottom of the jacket, with the pile sleeve clusters, is twisted 45 degrees with respect to the tower, to provide better access to the drill rig. We can be proud of the jacket which is the result of well-oiled cooperation between the HFG yards in Hartlepool, Zwijndrecht, Opole and Vlissingen,” Patrick Put, HFG project manager of Culzean said.

Heerema Vlissingen constructed the jacket, and the wellhead access deck with access ways was constructed by Heerema Hartlepool. Two of the four pile sleeve clusters were fabricated by Heerema Zwijndrecht. HFG Polska built the conductor guides and the grillage. The jacket has a height of 114m, a footprint of 31m by 31m and a top of 22m by 22m. The wellhead jacket, the wellhead access deck and the access ways together weigh 7100-tonne.

In September, Maersk awarded HFG its second contract to perform engineering, procurement, and construction for the Culzean jackets, for both the central processing facilities platform and the utility and living quarter platform. 

The first award came in October 2014, for the procurement and construction contract for wellhead jacket, the wellhead access deck and the access ways.

Earlier this month, fabrication of the billion dollar topsides destined for the megaproject began, with a steel-cutting ceremony in Singapore.

To read more of OE’s Culzean coverage, click here

Image: Photo from HFG. 

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