World’s Heaviest Load Jacked at Daewoo Shipbuilding

ALE has successfully completed the jack up of the Arkutun Dagi Topside for Exxon Neftegaz Limited at the shipyard of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. Ltd in Korea.

At 42,780te the topside is the heaviest load ever jacked. The piece will eventually be located in the Arkutun Dagi field off the east coast of Russia; the development is expected to be the largest oil and gas production platform in Russia where the first oil is scheduled to be produced next year ALE jacked the staggering 42,780te topside to a height of 24 metres which is the first project of this kind using its innovative Mega Jack System.

To complete the project the Mega Jack was configured in four sets of towers each made of a combination of three singular towers; this gave each of the four towers capacity of 15,000te and an overall jacking capacity of 60,000te. The Mega Jack is a completely computerised and stroke controlled system operated via a control room and took 11 hours to complete the 24 metre lift during maximum wind speeds of 50 m/s.

The next phase of work included the installation of a skid frame (DSF ) which the topside was lowered to by the Mega Jack. This was also completed within a day. The next phase will see the topside loaded out on to the DSF by a pulled load out using strand jacks to a barge for onward transportation to its final destination.

Kees Kompier Executive Director at ALE said: “This pioneering project is a great achievement for ALE and the Mega Jack which was created by our research and development team and engineers. The load is nearly double the weight of the previous heaviest load which is a great accomplishment for the company and really shows the capabilities of the Mega Jack. The system itself opens up a whole range of options for our clients and is completely scalable, meaning we can create a system to f it the requirements of projects becoming more flexible in our capacity and solutions.”

The Mega Jack which is stroke controlled, establishes stability from its jacking foundation. This means that enormous bracing structures and welding works to the platform for securing stability belong to the past. As such welding and cutting works at high level are not required and therefore working on height is completely eliminated due to the low level feed – in system for inserting jacking beams.

From the central control unit the jack – up operator operates the system by means of the fully computerized control system which includes data logging, weather data and optional dimensional surveys.

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Press release, May 30, 2013