Largest
TT designed platform launched
Tony Howell
EOG’s country manager Lindell Looger, left,
and Professor Ken Julien, Natural Gas Export Task
Force chairman, hold a model of the Oilbird platform
in front of the real thing at Friday’s launch.
By
Yvonne Webb
Trinidad Guardian
Port
Spain
Petroleumworld.com,
06 11 06
The
Oilbird platform, the largest, heaviest and most
complete structure to be designed and fabricated
locally, was launched at La Brea last Friday.
The
platform was designed at the industrial estate in
La Brea Labidco for EOG Resources at the cost of
US$54 million.
Pat
Woods EOG’s operations manager said the platform,
which is scheduled to be loaded onto a transport
barge from Labidco on June 20 and installed on EOG’s
SECC Block by J Ray McDermott, is also the first
to include a fully independent processing facility.
“Equipment
contained on board this platform is capable of processing
up to 300 million standard cubic feet of gas per
day,” Woods said of the platform which was
constructed within 700,000 man hours without a single
lost-time accident.
He
said the structure, constructed by Tofco, is a conventional
drilling and processing steel platform, which consists
of six deck legs and three deck levels totalling
28,000 square feet of floor space.
The
jacket structure weighs over 1,200 tonnes and the
deck structure, together with all its onboard processing
equipment, weighs approximately 1,550 tonnes.
“These
weights are nearly twice as heavy as any platform
previously built in Trinidad. This is a tremendous
accomplishment and is also a tangible indicator
of the growing capabilities of our local industry,”
the operations manager pointed out.
Natural
Gas Export Task Force chairman Professor Ken Julien,
who launched the platform, said EOG previously described
as the “little boy on the block” has
made these significant milestones, “as if
to say that the little boy is here to stay and can
in fact be bigger and more effective than the big
boys.”
Julien
spoke about the shift from the days when resources
and machines were what determined the future or
growth of a country.
He
said while the industrial revolution with its machinery
efficiencies held the key to what happened or did
not happen, when one looks at the hydrocarbon resources
it is clear that knowledge, ideas, creativity and
boldness will be required to take T&T forward.
Julien
qualified his position to state that T&T has
less than 0.1 per cent of the oil reserves of the
world and 0.5 per cent of total world gas reserves.
“If
we are to look at that fairly objectively, we would
say why a country with such limited gas reserves
want to pursue hydrocarbon as the basis of its economy.
“But
we are bold enough to do that. We are in a world
where knowledge, ideas, boldness, risk-taking have
become the important criteria for success.
“It
is no longer size, no longer tremendous resources
and quite frankly no longer machines.”
Julien
drew a parallel with EOG saying 13 years ago it
was bold enough, as a small company, to come to
a small country like T&T and take a risk which
has proven to be quite successful.
Trinidad
Guardian
Thursday 1st June, 2006
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©2006 Trinodad Guardian. All Rights Reserved.
