First Subsea Awarded Heidelberg Spar Mooring Connector Contract

Deepwater mooring specialist, First Subsea Ltd has been awarded a contract by Technip Inc to supply the subsea mooring connectors for a 23,000-ton truss spar platform moored in 5,310ft (1,620 m) of water in Anadarko Petroleum Corp's Heidelberg field development in Green Canyon Blocks 859, 860,903, 904 and 948 in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
The Heidelberg spar will be moored by nine Series III Ballgrab ball and taper mooring connectors attached to polyester mooring lines. The connector's male mandrels are manufactured in compliance with American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) 2009 Approval for specialist subsea mooring connectors.  First Subsea is the first manufacturer of offshore mooring connectors to achieve ABS type approval for the design and manufacture of large-scale forgings over 500mm in diameter.

The Heidelberg field is close to Anadarko's 100%-owned Constitution spar, also moored using First Subsea mooring connectors in 2005. Since then over 370 Ballgrab connectors have been successfully deployed in deepwater moorings worldwide.

“This is our tenth spar mooring project for Technip,” says John Shaw, managing director, First Subsea Ltd. “The speed and ease of the Ballgrab connection is well proven in a range of industry-leading, deepwater projects in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Heidelberg spar will have a capacity of more than 80,000 barrels of oil and 2.3 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.