140 km of rigid subsea flowlines have successfully been installed for the INPEX-operated Ichthys LNG Project at the Ichthys Field in the Browse Basin, offshore Western Australia.
The infield flowlines were installed in a water depth of up to 275 m to carry reservoir fluids from 20 subsea wells to the project’s two floating processing facilities – a central processing facility and floating production, storage and offloading facility.
All flowlines were installed with in-line structures, weighing up to 220 t, requiring a total of more than 11,000 onshore and offshore flowline welds to be executed.
Ichthys Project Managing Director Louis Bon said the safe completion of the complex subsea network was a major accomplishment.
“We are very proud the infield pipelay was successfully completed without a single lost injury time or any harm to the environment,” Mr Bon said.
“This achievement has marked the end of a 16 month offshore campaign to install 47 km of 6 inch and 8 inch mono-ethylene glycol flowlines, 7 km of 12 inch transfer condensate flowlines and 85 km of 18 inch production flowlines.”
In addition to the infield flowlines, the project’s offshore installation campaign has completed the installation of 49 foundation piles, five production manifolds and a 6,500 t riser support structure.
The infield flowlines work was led by Heerema Marine Contractors Australia, under subcontract to the lead contractor McDermott Australia, using the deepwater construction vessel DCV Aegir.
The Ichthys LNG Project is scheduled for start-up in the third calendar quarter of 2017.
Joint venture interests in the project are INPEX (63.445 per cent), TOTAL (30 per cent), CPC (2.625 per cent), Tokyo Gas (1.575 per cent), Osaka Gas (1.2 per cent), Chubu Electric (0.735 per cent) and Toho Gas (0.420 per cent).