Forgemasters complete work on N Sea platform
2 Apr 2012
Sheffield, UK – Sheffield Forgemasters’ offshore division Vulcan SFM has recently completed the fabrication of cast steel pad-eyes into large tubular sections made of rolled steel-plate for Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN).
The tubular sections form part of the leg of a North Sea platform which will be lifted into place using the cast pad-eyes. The components were then dispatched to a fabrication yard in Tyneside where the platform is being assembled.
The platform being built by OGN will finally see service in the Forties oil field, the largest field in the North Sea, for the oil company Apache.
Assembly of the pieces took place in Forgemasters’ foundry. Prior to carrying out the work a wooden model was created to determine the best method of manipulating the 27 tonne castings into 5.9m long, 2.2m diameter sections of tubular steel in order to fit and weld them together.
“We have a track record of welding castings to structural steel, including pile pad-eyes for the Malaysian markets for example, which secured a floating platform to the sea-bed and welding lengths of pipe to cast wye-pieces for use in sub-sea pipelines,” said Paul Mockford, design director at Vulcan SFM.
“What we are now doing with assemblies like the OGN project is to take that fabrication process to another level of complexity,” he added. “There is definitely a market demand for this activity as the offshore market gets increasingly busy and as we work with fabrication yards which don’t have previous experience of welding to castings.”
