The quarters and utilities (QU) facility has been delivered to the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim LNG project, offshore Senegal and Mauritania.
BP (LON:BP) vice president Massaer Cisse announced the delivery on LinkedIn.
© Supplied by BP“The QU will be the nerve centre of the hub terminal and provide accommodation for the diverse workforce who will operate it. This is a significant milestone for both the construction of the hub terminal and for the project,” he said.
Chinese manufacturer CIMC Raffles completed construction of the QU facility on May 31. It then travelled 11,885 nautical miles to the Senegal-Mauritania border.
Seaway 7’s heavy lift Seaway Hawk transported the facilities from China. The facilities were towed from CIMC’s yard to Yantai, where it was then floated onto the Seaway Hawk.
BP signed the contract with the Chinese builder in April 2019.
CIMC said the platform was 95 metres long and 70 metres wide, weighing more than 10,000 tonnes. It has more than 540,000 metres of cables and more than 9,000 explosion proof pieces of equipment.
© Supplied by CIMC RafflesIt will host up to 216 staff, in addition to the main control room and the port control room.
The Chinese builder said it had designed the platform to go for 25 years without requiring docking maintenance.
There were some challenges during construction, around imported materials and difficulties in moving international personnel during COVID-19.
Golar LNG expects to start up the floating LNG (FLNG) Gimi vessel for Tortue Phase 1 in late 2023. The FLNG vessel is 86% complete.
Updated to acknowledge LeaCon Photography credit for the QU pictures at the Tortue project.