Fugro Seacore (FSCL) has just completed drilling on the jacket installation works on the North Rankin B platform in Australia.
Fugro Seacore designed, built and operated two large pile top drills for Heerema Marine Contractors for jacket installation work of the platform substructure. The North Rankin B platform is the Australia’s largest offshore platform, measuring 100m long by 50m wide weighing 25,000 tonnes and has been installed alongside the existing North Rankin A platform, and connected by two new 100 metre bridges. It is part of the North Rankin 2 Project, a $5 billion investment announced in 2008 for the North Rankin and Perseus gas fields offshore Australia.
In April 2008 Heerema Marine Contractors Australia signed a contract with Woodside Energy as operator, on behalf of Australia’sNWSV (North West Shelf Venture), for the transport and installation of the North Rankin B Platform substructure and topside off the northwest coast of Western Australia, and approached FSCL to tender for the design and build of two large pile top drills and three complete drill strings for the jacket installation works.
FSCL have a long and successful history designing, building and operating marine drills. FSCL was awarded the contract to design and build the equipment for Heerema after a lengthy and thorough tender process against stiff competition. FSCL were again successful winning a further tender to operate the drills for Heerema for the jacket installation works.
The design process involved FSCL, Heerema and Det Norske Veritas (DNV). The drills were fabricated by FSCL at their headquarters at Falmouth in Cornwall, UK, using in-house facilities to very high standards. A stringent and strenuous testing regime followed in FSCL’s yard. Once testing was complete, the drills were rebuilt into two complete masts, and two complete base sections; and shipped out to Batam, Indonesia. In Batam, they were fully rebuilt and function-tested, along with the complete bottom hole assemblies. All the equipment was then loaded on to Heerema’s semi-submersible crane vessel for arrival on site in September 2011.
The drilling works began in November 2011 after jacket launching, set down and driving the primary piles. The efficient FSCL drill team achieved drilling speeds of up to 36m/h during operations, drilling in 2480mm diameter piles at a water depth of 125m. The complete sockets were finished in an average of 32 hours.