J. Ray McDermott’s Caspian subsidiary has completed installation of offshore facilities at the Yuri Korchagin field for OOO LUKOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft (LUKOIL), a subsidiary of OAO LUKOIL Oil Company.

The Yuri Korchagin field is the first of the North Caspian fields in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea to be developed by LUKOIL and brought commercially on-stream. The field development requires a number of major offshore facilities including an ice-resistant fixed processing platform (LSP-1) and adjacent living quarters (LSP-2) joined together by a 243-foot bridge. Oil from LSP-1 will be delivered to the marine transportation complex which consists of a Floating Storage Offloading system (FSO) and Single Point Mooring (SPM) via a 36 mile 12-inch oil pipeline. 

Within the contractual scope of work, J. Ray performed the transportation and installation of 14 foundation piles for LSP-1, transportation and installation of the SPM substructure weighing 1,005 tons, including five foundation piles, and the SPM deck, in addition to hook-up of the SPM deck to the substructure.

Additional work included engineering, procurement, fabrication, transportation and installation of tie-in spools connecting LSP-1 and the SPM to the 36-mile sub-sea pipeline as well as hydrostatic leak testing and flushing of the entire pipeline system. The pipeline was laid by J. Ray under a separate contract with LUKOIL in 2008; the company also successfully performed transportation and installation of the FSO, its connection to the SPM system and testing.

“We completed the installation scope of work offshore in a month and a half, and without a single lost time incident,” said Dan Houser, J. Ray McDermott’s Vice President and General Manager, Europe and Central Asia.

Fabrication of the installation aids was performed by the company’s fabrication base at Baku Deepwater Jacket Factory named after Heydar Aliyev, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), J. Ray McDermott’s long-term business partner in the Caspian. For the offshore installation work, J. Ray utilized six vessels provided by the Caspian Marine Services, Ltd., as per their agreement with another SOCAR’s subsidiary, Caspian Sea Oil Fleet.

(www.jraymcdermott.com)