A bow-mounted disconnectable turret, the largest in the world and one of five in its class (typhoon), has been built by a UAE company.
The turret and its rigid arm have been completed in record time at Lamprell's Jebel Ali yard and are now on a transport barge ready to sail to Korea where it will be mounted on the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel being built at Samsung Heavy Industries, said Stephen Smith, marketing manager, Sharjah headquartered Lamprell Energy Limited.
"This is the first time a turret has been built and supplied by the fabricator fully commissioned and tested prior to loadout. As a result, the turret will be plug and play effectively once installed onto the vessel," said Christophe Rou-sseau, site project manager.
SBM, Monaco-based specialist FPSO providers and designers, are the design consultants for the turret and the rigid arm being built by Lamprell.
The FPSO vessel is being built by Samsung for Perth-based Woodside Petro-leum, who in turn retained SBM as consultants.
Woodside is developing the $1.1 billion (Dh4.04 billion) Enfield oil project in the Exmouth region off the coast of Western Australia.
Mitsui, Japan's second-biggest trading company, has bought 40 per cent of the Enfield project and will also take part in future exploration and production in the permit.
According to the company statements, the field, which will use the FPSO vessel, is scheduled to start pumping oil in the fourth quarter of 2006 with initial output of about 100,000 barrels per day.
"In Korea, the hull of the FPSO is scheduled to be provisionally delivered this month whereby the installation and integration of the production modules shall commence," said Smith.
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