Sheffield Forgemasters’ specialist offshore division, Vulcan SFM, will design and manufacture components for the new MonArb North Sea oil platform.
Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN) has secured a £50m deal for the design and fabrication of an oil and gas ‘jacket’ – a huge, steel, offshore platform support structure fixed to the sea bed – for operator Talisman Sinopec Energy UK’s MonArb project.
OGN awarded Vulcan a multimillion pound contract to design and manufacture the jacket castings, two pad eyes weighing 27-tonnes each and two 55-tonne trunnion nodes.
The pad eyes and nodes will form high strength and fatigue resistant joints to connect the main leg and brace tubulars which make up the jacket structure.
These components will allow the massive 5,400 tonne jacket to be lifted, rotated and installed on the sea-bed at its location in the Montrose/Arbroath field – 130 miles east of Aberdeen. The jacket structure will support a 10,000 tonne deck.
In a separate contract, awarded directly by Talisman Sinopec Energy UK, Vulcan has designed and manufactured four deck lift points – two castings of 35 tonnes and two of 38 tonnes plus four forged pins and four cast sheaths for lifting and installing the deck on top of the jacket.
The contract was awarded following a competitive tendering process.
Paul Mockford, design director of Vulcan SFM, said: “We are the world experts in cast nodes. No other company in the world has our experience and knowledge of designing and manufacturing these complex safety-critical castings.
“These castings form an integral part of the structure and will need to function for the life of the structure in extremely harsh operating conditions.
As part of the deck contract Vulcan will also supply a 10-tonne steel joint for the flare boom on the platform. The flare boom is a steel projection off the side of the platform which supports the flare burner for safely flaring off excess gas.
The MonArb hub is expected to be able to handle 150 million cubic feet per day of gas and 30,000 barrels per day of oil.
The MonArb project is a £1.6 billion investment by Talisman Sinopec Energy UK Limited and its partner, Marubeni Oil & Gas (U.K.) Limited, to extend the life of the oilfields to 2030.The jacket, nearly 120 metres long, will be ready in spring 2014 with installation expected in summer that year.
Vulcan was recently awarded Energy Industry Company of the Year at the 2013 Insider Yorkshire International Trade Awards.
Sheffield Forgemasters has entered The Manufacturer of the Year Awards 2013, in the People and Skills and Innovation and Design categories.
