APLNG Hits Milestone with Final Shipment of Pipes (Australia)

APLNG Hits Milestone with Final Shipment of Pipes

The final shipment of steel pipes for Australia Pacific LNG’s 530km high pressure gas pipeline has arrived on schedule and was unloaded in Gladstone Port, Queensland on Monday.

Manufacturing and transporting the steel pipe for Australia Pacific LNG’s pipeline to Australia has been a major logistical challenge undertaken over the past 18 months. It has involved a total of 42,000 steel pipes, most at 18 metres in length and 42 inches in diameter, and weighing around 270,000 tonnes, delivered via 45 ship movements, around 250,000 crane lifts, 307 train trips, and has been coordinated by teams in three countries.

The pipeline is a key component of the Australia Pacific LNG Project, which is creating a new export industry for Queensland and involves the development of gas fields in the Surat and Bowen basins and a new coal seam gas (CSG) to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on Curtis Island off the coast of Gladstone.

The Project is over one-third complete, has reached a peak workforce of around 10,000 employees and contractors, and to December 2012 more than 80 percent of total expenditure or $10 billion has been spent in Australia, with $7 billion of that in Queensland.

Origin, as the upstream operator for the Australia Pacific LNG Project, is responsible for construction and operation of the 530km high pressure gas transmission pipeline which will connect the gas fields to the LNG facility.

Origin Pipelines Project Manager Graeme Hogarth said the delivery of the final shipment of pipe represented a significant milestone in the Australia Pacific LNG Project.

“The high pressure gas pipeline is a key component of the overall Australia Pacific LNG Project and this final shipment of pipes arriving today as planned ensures we remain on schedule for delivery of first LNG in mid-2015,” Graeme said.

“The manufacturing and transportation of 42,000 sections of pipe from Japan to Malaysia and then to central Queensland has been an extremely complex logistics project that has been completed on time and on budget.

“I would like to recognize the many people and organizations who have worked so well together to achieve this success, including international manufacturers and shipping agencies, port operations, stevedores, Government departments, rail and road transport operators and construction contractors.”

The pipes were manufactured in Japan by Nippon Steel for Metal One, coated in Malaysia by WASCO, transported by vessels under charter from Thoresen and Westlink, and unloaded in Australia by Patrick Stevedoring.

Port operations were managed by Gladstone Ports Corporation, with quarantine and Bio- Security services provided by the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Pipes were transported from Gladstone via rail by Australian Eastern Railways to laydown areas at Callide, near Biloela and transported to work sites for construction. Use of rail removed around 10,000 heavy truck movements from Gladstone and the surrounding traffic corridor.

Construction of the main pipeline is well advanced, with more than 140km already in the ground and over 80km of pipeline easement reinstated and revegetated.

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LNG World News Staff, May 14, 2013; Image: Origin Energy