Giant Valhall deck set for June sailaway - Heerema Fabrication Group

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‘We believe there is to some extent a revival of the North Sea market
with sufficient projects, including a couple of large projects.’
Tino Vinkesteijn
Giant Valhall deck
set for June sailaway
The BP Valhall
re-development main deck
nearing completion at
Heerema Zwijndrecht in
late March.
The 11,000t integrated production and hotel deck for BP Norge’s Valhall redevelopment project is on schedule to leave Heerema
Fabrication Group’s Zwijndrecht facility in mid June. At peak around 1200 people were working simultaneously on the project, which has
taken the Dutch yard more than two million man hours to complete. Meg Chesshyre visited the yard as it geared up for the final push.

‘This is a truly international
project with a very large
number of participants.’
Koos Herweijer
‘We’ve seen yards from the
Gulf of Mexico, who would
traditionally stick to that side
of the ocean, bidding here in
Europe.’
Nick Routledge
The Zwijndrecht yard’s main
deck contract covers fabrication,
integration and load-out onto
barges for transportation to the final
location offshore Norway. The design
was executed by Mustang Engineering.
Heerema’s contract also includes a 350t
flare boom, nine bridges varying in
weight from 24 to 250t and three towers
of 29t, 40t and 41t, required because
the water depth at the Valhall field has
increased by about 5.4m because of seabed
subsidence since the facilities were first
installed in 1981/2.
The new platform, with a design life
of 40 years, bed capacity of 180 and a
production capacity of 150,000b/d of oil
and 5mmcm/d of gas, will be supplied
with green power via a 292km long direct
current power cable from Lista, south
Norway, using ABB’s proprietary DC-AC
converter technology. The platform’s
jacket and piles have been fabricated at
Norway’s Aker Verdal yard. Saipem has
the offshore installation contract.
Deck fabrication started at Zwijndrecht
in November 2007. An additional contract
for the construction of a 2100t weather
deck module (42x35x16m) for the project
was awarded to HFG in June 2009.
The biggest challenge posed by the deck
is its sheer size, explains commercial
manager Koos Herweijer. Measuring
100x47x50m, it is being hailed as one of
the largest objects ever designed and built
to be lifted as a single lift. Despite the
fact that Heerema Zwijndrecht owns the
largest indoor fabrication facility in the
Netherlands, the unit had to be moved
outside in January 2010 due to limited
space inside the hall to complete the deck.
Herweijer says the construction
philosophy is Gulf of Mexico, meaning
that it is based largely on skid-mounted
units, with packages procured and
designed by others. ‘Our scope is then
to receive and integrate all these units
into one large deck,’ he explains. ‘This is
a truly international project with a very
large number of participants. The design
has been done in Houston; the client is in
Norway and skids and other sub-supplies
have come from fabricators in Europe
and from companies all over the world.
It has been a challenge because of the
number of parties involved, and their
being spread over so many continents and
the various time zones.’
The stats for deck fabrication materials
and consumables also make impressive
reading. As well as absorbing some 5000t
of steel and making extensive use of
corrosion-resistant alloys, with 10km of
duplex piping up to 36in diameter and
7km of titanium piping up to 30in, the
completed deck will have some 18km of
cable trays, 400km of cable, 7km of tubing
and 12,500 cable terminations.
‘This project demonstrates our
capabilities in managing complex, multidisciplinary
projects,’ comments Tino
Vinkesteijn, who took over as managing
director of Heerema Zwijndrecht and
Heerema Vlissingen last September
having previously worked in the power
industry as president of Belgian firm CMI
Energy Engineering.
Vinkesteijn says the order book at
HFG’s Dutch yards at this moment is
full until late summer. ‘2009 was a
relatively slow year,’ he adds. ‘Luckily
we didn’t need any orders because we
were full.’ In addition to the Valhall
deck, the Zwijndrecht yard is also
building some subsea structures ures for
BP Angola, block 31.
There is a new wave of projects
in the pipeline with the first
couple of awards due in the
early summer. A second wave is
anticipated in the fourth quarter
of 2010, where some more decisions will
be made. ‘The total volume is far higher
than our capacity, so we hope to take
some of those projects out of the water,’
notes Vinkesteijn. The North Sea is going
to stay HFG’s main, home market, he
adds. ‘We believe there is to some extent
a revival of that North Sea market with
sufficient projects, including a couple of
large projects.’ He warns, however, that
there are some yards without work at the
moment so no doubt there will be price
competition.
He believes the North Sea market
will show a declining trend in the long
term, but then again points out: ‘We also
thought that five years ago!’ At the same
time HFG is obviously looking at other
business opportunities and possibilities
Other items being fabricated by Heerema
for BP’s VRD project include a 2100t
weather deck module and (inset) t
nine
bridges varying in weight from
24t to 250t.

By mid-January the deck had run out of space in Zwijndrecht’s fabrication hall and had
to be moved outside on 70 Mammoet multiwheel trailers for completion.
elsewhere. West Africa is an option. An
attempt to enter the Nigerian market
came to nothing because of the political
risk there, and HFG is now withdrawing.
Kazakhstan and Brazil are both seen as
highly potential markets.
The Heerema Group, comprising,
Heerema Fabrication Group and
Heeerema Marine Contractors (HMC),
is currently examining how it will
participate in these markets in the
future, and expects to have some answers
shortly. Currently HMC and HFG
have independent strategies, but they
know each other well having worked
together for many years. It is anticipated
that co-operation between the group’s
engineering, fabrication and marine
installation arms is going to be closer in
the future.
One of the competencies Heerema
is trying to continue to build is EPC
contracting with fabrication-oriented
engineering being the key. Vinkestejn
says the fabricator is currently the last
part of the train. ‘The barge is going to
sail away at a certain date, because the
lift is secured, so we have to compensate
for everything that happens early on
in the design and procurement phase,’
he explains. Heerema is also looking at
participating in the design, construction
and installation of offshore wind
substructures, and at the design and
fabrication of substructures for deeper
waters.
Asked how he saw the offshore wind
market developing, Vinkesteijn says that
whereas there is no doubt there is a very
strong drive politically, it is hard to tell
at what speed. All the projections so far
have moved upwards, he says, and there
are so many regulatory, finance and
supply chain issues still to be resolved.
HFG had already proved its competency
by building a transformer platform at
the Vlissingen yard for installation in
German waters (OE April 2008), and the
group’s Hartlepool yard has built an
offshore collector substation for Greater
Gabbard and is currently building two
substation topsides for another UK
offshore wind farm, Sheringham Shoal.
Heerema’s engineering arm, HFG
Engineering, was formed following the
acquisition of US-based consulting firm
Albert-Garaudy Associates (AGA) in
late 2006. It works both with HFG and
independently doing concept studies
with the added experience of how yards
operate. The US office has carried out
engineering work and concept studies for
floaters in the Gulf of Mexico. In Europe
it has done some FEED work for Statoil,
and is also busy with topsides design,
wind farm work and concept studies.
‘We’ve been bidding ourselves
crazy,’ says Nick Routledge, business
development manager at HFG
Engineering Europe. ‘I’d almost say we
have hardly ever seen so many prospects,’
but, he wonders, ‘How many of these are
really going to happen’ He agrees that
following on from 2009 yards are hungry
for work. ‘We’ve seen yards from the Gulf
of Mexico, who would traditionally stick
to that side of the ocean, who’ve been
bidding here in Europe.’ At HFG, he adds,
‘we can do a lot in a very short time, and
so if the schedule is shorter we have a
little bit of an advantage’.
Routledge was involved in the AGA
acquisition and subsequently spent three
years in Houston as HFG Engineering’s
VP projects, but he also has a strong
fabrication pedigree. After joining HFG as
project manager in 1998, he successfully
executed three projects at Zwijndrecht
before moving to the Heerema Tønsberg
yard in Norway to manage Ringhorne’s
fabrication and then returning to the
Netherlands as project manager on De
Ruyter.
Incorporating BP and Mustang’s
further development of the initial Valhall
deck design presented challenges along
the way, but they were overcome by
working together, reports HFG. Another
challenge – weight – was dealt with by
introducing the separate weather deck
module, also successfully fabricated at
the yard. Despite numerous changes
and additions, ‘our work on BP’s Valhall
project is on schedule’, declares Routledge
proudly.
‘That is what we take a pride in, good
quality and on schedule, so that the
client ultimately has a lower risk,’ he
adds. ‘They can rely on getting their
installation on time and to a high quality.’
Emphasizing the importance of
engineering being aligned to the needs
of fabrication, Routledge says: ‘The way
they build decks here is in layers, so you
have to go to a very high level of detail
in the engineering on the lower levels
to ensure that they are pretty much
finalized in terms of structural steel and
supports.’ A more traditional approach
would be to look at the total platform as a
whole as opposed to splitting it back down
into the different sections, he notes.
The fabrication-led engineering
approach means looking at structural
details where a stand-alone engineering
might be looking to optimize engineering
and add stiffness to lower the quantity of
steel, he says. ‘We can make a judgment
and say it is actually simpler to put a
little bit more steel into the deck, keep
the profiles all very similar, and in that
way make it much easier and faster
to fabricate.’ There were many other
examples on the electrical, piping and
piping installation sides, he adds.
On the wind farm front, Routledge
says HFG has been ‘very successful at
designing and building the substation
platforms’ but that financing remains a
problem in this sector. There have been
many recent proposals for offshore wind
farm developments yet the majority are
still in the market place, he stresses,
pointing out that some consortia being
formed without a big oil company behind
them were at the whim of financial
groups, while traditional electrical utility
companies backing the projects had to
organize themselves to adopt offshore
practices. OE