Benguela-Belize Compliant Piled Tower: Topside Engineering

This paper is a review of the Topsides Drilling and Production Facility for the Benguela-Belize Platform. The review covers design critical aspects including planning, construction support, vendor data control, weight management, and design interfaces.

The 33,300 s.t. Benguela-Belize topsides is three times larger than the Baldpate CPT topsides and four times larger than the Petronius CPT topsides. The detail design was completed in 12 months, with the first handovers to the fabrication contractor occurring 8 months after contract award. Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) and Kellog Brown & Root LLC (KBR) used KBR's Stage Methodology to successfully execute the handover of the engineering design to DSME for inclusion of vendor certified data and fabrication support engineering.

Each of the three major lifts presented challenges for Heerema's Thialf Heavy Lift Crane Vessel (HLCV), the largest marine construction vessel in the world. Together with DSME and Heerema, KBR developed control and mitigation strategies to ensure the lifts remained within the capacity of the lift vessel without compromising the installation strategy.

Weight and center of gravity control were key factors in maintaining schedule and controlling costs. The relatively small cross section of the CPT tower tends to make the tower weight and the foundation design more sensitive to weight increases and COG shifts than conventional jacket structures. The weight and COG monthly review caused numerous relocations of the equipment and subassemblies. The project design team was able to improve the COG position significantly and control the design weight so that the platform could be fabricated and installed on schedule.