Fitzroy marketing manager Mark Arnold said the 110-tonne arch had been finished on schedule and the company was looking forward to its major job on the $US457 million ($A520 million) Maari development – the installation, hook-up and commissioning of the wellhead platform.
Late last year, Maari partner Horizon Oil said the fabrication of the wellhead platform in Lumut, Malaysia, remained the most challenging aspect of the development, with the focus on meeting the scheduled load-out date next month, when the heavy lift vessel Blue Marlin was expected to be available.
Overall, the Maari project is more than 60% complete, with all major process modules and process equipment installed on the Raroa, and subsea facilities readied for delivery for installation.
Maari’s mid-water arch was needed to reduce stresses on flowlines as they rise from the wellhead platform to the floating production storage and offtake vessel Raroa about 1.5km away. The arch will be installed in about 100m of water, but about 60m above the seabed, some 80km off the south Taranaki coast.
The arch consists of guides and clamps for the flowlines, supported on the steel frame that also houses the buoyancy tanks that are at the heart of the system. The tanks contain pressurised compartments to equalise the internal buoy pressure and ambient water pressure. Fitzroy also manufactured the hold-back structure and piles for the arch.
The mid-water arch contract was with Danish client NKT Flexibles, which was responsible for installing the flowlines, risers and umbilicals. Fitzroy’s next contract is with Perth-based Clough, the main Maari engineering contractor.
Last year, Fitzroy supplied four similar, but smaller, mid-water arches for the Tui oil project, also off Taranaki, in a contract worth about $NZ6 million ($A5.2 million).
Horizon said first Maari crude was still expected in August, but this depended on the availability of the Ensco 107 jack-up rig, which is working on development wells for the nearby Kupe gas and condensate project.
The Maari partners are operator OMV (69%), Todd Energy (16%), Horizon Oil (10%) and Cue Energy Resources (5%
