INPEX has completed the offshore pre-lay of the chain and mooring system as well as the last topsides lift on the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility.
This comes after the final module for LNG Train 2 was moved into place earlier in the month.
The pre-lay of the 77 km chain and mooring system in the Browse Basin involved 49 chains laid in water depths of up to 250 m and anchored to foundations piles – 5.5 m in diameter and 63 m long.
The mooring system will secure the projects two offshore facilities – the FPSO and Central Processing Facility (CPF) – in the Ichthys Field seabed for at least 40 years of continuous operation.
Supplying more than 40,000 t of large-scale anchor chains for the project represented nearly 18 months of worldwide chain production, with each chain link weighing more than 700 kg.
The 28 CPF mooring chains required more than 25,000 t of mainly 178 mim diameter chain, while the 21 FPSO mooring chains needed more than 15,000 t of mainly 161 mm diameter chain.
Meanwhile, the last topsides lift on the FPSO was completed over the weekend.
The lift—which occurred in the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering yard in Okpo, South Korea—marks an important milestone in the integration phase for the Project’s offshore facilities.
This step also allows further progress of pre-commissioning and commissioning activities, with modules, pipe racks and equipment packages now lifted onto the hull of the FPSO.
