December 22 - ALE has completed the load-out of a satellite platform topside, weighing 3,200 tonnes, for the Korchagin oilfield development project in Russia.
ALE was contracted to perform the engineering, weighing, jacking, load-out and offshore pulling operations of the topside, as well as the mooring and ballast supervision for the project in Astrakhan.
The first stage of the project started in November 2017. It involved jacking the topside to 1.5 m and weighing it so the client could integrate skid beams in between the topside and the support frame underneath, as HLPFI reported here.
In December, ALE performed the mooring and pulling operations using four SJ600 strand jacks and two 300-tonne capacity breakout jacks to load-out the topside onto the transport barge.
The next phase will involve the skidding of the topside on to the substructure during the float-over operations in the Caspian Sea. This is expected to start in 2018.
