Australia: ‘What Will the Weather Be Like at Gorgon?’

Australia: 'What Will the Weather Be at Like Gorgon?'

Metocean Services International (MSI) has been awarded an 18 month contract to provide weather forecasting services to Leighton Contractors as part of their involvement in the Gorgon project.

Leighton Contractors in consortium with Saipem are carrying out the engineering, procurement and construction of the LNG Off-take Jetty and Marine Structures for the Gorgon LNG Project. Leighton is transporting the top platform structures from Indonesia to Henderson, south of Perth where they are installed into concrete caissons. The completed structures are then transported to Barrow Island using the heavy lift semi submersible Boabarge 33.

Transportation of the top platform from Indonesia has already commenced. There are nine topside planned voyages in and out of Australian Maritime Complex (AMC) Henderson facility whilst the Boabarge 33 has 14 voyages in and out of AMC Henderson facility planned commencing early September 2011.

MSI, through its agreement with Aerospace and Marine International (AMI), will provide both daily site specific 5 day rolling forecasts as well as 5 day tow route forecasts for the delivery runs. The forecasts include tabulated and graphically presented forecasts for wind speed (at 10m, 50m and Max Gust), wind direction, wind wave (direction, height and period), swell wave (direction, height and period) and significant wave (height and period) for Tow Forecast. Site Forecasts also provide air temperature and humidity in addition to these parameters. Forecasts are delivered daily via email and are available via a secure website. This service is also backed up by 24/7 email / phone access direct to the Duty Forecasters so that any events of concern that appear on the forecast can be discussed directly with the person producing the forecast.

Forecasts are generated using a combination of observational and forecast data. Observation data includes that from satellite, radar, land stations, ocean buoys, offshore structures and merchant ships whilst the forecast data includes that sourced from numerous global models including NCEP, NCOM and WW3 to name just a few.

AMI was formed in 1991 to provide Optimum Voyage Routing Services to ships traversing the major oceans of the world. Through major development and recruitment campaigns AMI has become one of the most experienced companies in this field currently supporting nearly 5000 vessel voyages each year.

[mappress]
Source: MSI, May 2, 2012