Solitaire’s back
THE LARGEST pipe laying vessel in the world arrived on Sunday in a shallow bay in Shetland to start installing the 232 kilometre long pipeline that will connect the new Shetland gas plant to the rest of the UK.
On Monday morning, the 300 metre Solitaire is due to commence the delicate two day operation of pulling the concrete coated 30 inch pipe ashore at Firths Voe, coming as close as 900 metres inshore.
She was last in Shetland nine years ago connecting the BP operated Clair oil field west of Shetland to Sullom Voe oil terminal.
Laggan-Tormore operator Total has commissioned Swiss-based Allseas Group and Dutch company Van Oord to carry out this specialised task.
Workers have spent the last few months preparing the site at the head of Firths Voe.
Van Oord project manager Menno Bijl said the pipe would be pulled ashore with the help of a powerful winch that ensures the pipe is exactly in the centre of the trench it will be buried in.
The sea pipe will then be connected to the land pipe that has been laid between the gas plant construction site and Firths Voe landing site.
Once the pipe-pull has been completed the Solitaire will slowly disappear over the horizon while she lays the pipeline that will eventually connect into the existing Frigg network.
With an average laying speed of seven kilometres per day, the work is expected to be completed by June this year.
Total said they continued to be on schedule to complete the massive £2.5 billion engineering task of opening up the west of Shetland oil and gas fields by summer 2014.
Once construction work is completed, gas from the Laggan and Tormore fields will be pumped to the new £500 million Shetland gas plant for stabilising before being exported via this new pipeline for processing in St Fergus.
Total said that the new infrastructure had enough slack capacity to allow more gas fields out west to connect to the system.
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