Case Study Overview
Red7Marine was involved in Fawley Power Station’s Project Fast which involved the unique challenge of transferring 18 oil and gas processing units, which are a to form part of the overall £800m project to construct a new low-sulphur diesel facility at ExxonMobil’s Fawley refinery.
Working with the team at Sarens on behalf of end client, ExxonMobil, Red7Marine mobilised the Typhoon 3000 from its naval base in Portsmouth round to the project site in Fawley. The project, with many logistical challenges, required the transfer of nearly 5,000T (4,899.6). worth of refinery equipment from the water to the shore. The Typhoon 3000 was chosen for the project as the existing dock at the power station could not be used for the module unloading due to the width of the dock entrance and the size and position of the centre of gravity of the modules.
At a glance
- Location: Fawley Power Station
- Plant used: Typhoon 3000
- What we did: Red7Marine was involved in Fawley Power Station’s Project Fast which involved the unique challenge of transferring 18 oil and gas processing units.
The Solution
Once the Typhoon 3000 was positioned, the internal tanks were ballasted with 1,500t of water. This allowed the barge to sufficiently pre-load each leg to 1,400t ensuring that sufficient bearing capacity was established prior to the module transfers. The barge was deballasted and lowered ahead of the arrival of the first module.
Deck elevation of both barges needed to align to allow the safe transfer of modules from one to the other with the use of SPMTs. The hull draft required to achieve this would have rendered the Typhoon buoyant, therefore the team utilised the barge’s submersible features by opening the top and bottom covers of the barge tanks, allowing flooding of the hull, cancelling any buoyancy effects during the transfer period.
Once the flat-top barge was safely moored alongside the Typhoon 3000, 3m linkspans were installed between barge decks to allow a level transfer from one to the other. Once the SPMTs were on board the Typhoon 3000 could then jack to match the quay side level to allow the SPMTs to track over the second link span (16m) and on to the quayside.
The SPMTS carried the modules on road to be used in ExxonMobil’s Fawley Facility.
