Texas Tea Flows Well in Coastal Bend
Published Mar 21, 2007
Atlantis, at 46,856 metric tons, is being assembled in the Coastal Bend region and will be the deepest moored oil platform in the world.
In Texas, as they say, things are just bigger, and that includes semisubmersible oil rigs.
In 2005, the largest offshore drilling platform ever built left Ingleside’s deepwater port for its 25-year home in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dubbed Thunder Horse, the gigantic drilling platform has the capacity to process 250,000 barrels of oil a day and 200 million cubic feet of gas. Operated and owned predominantly by BP, Thunder Horse weighs 75,000 metric tons with a main deck the size of about four football fields. The rig’s quarters are designed to sleep 229 people.
Ingleside’s role in the history of Thunder Horse is thanks to Kiewit Offshore Services, the fabrication contractor hired by BP to “mate” the hull and topsides. “It is a fact that BP used Kiewit Offshore Services for the commissioning work on the Thunder Horse deepwater platform,” says Ayana McIntosh-Lee, a BP spokeswoman in Houston.
Topside components were constructed in Louisiana and floated across the Gulf, while the hull was built in South Korea. McIntosh-Lee says the hull was towed around the southern tip of Africa and into Corpus Christi Bay for “total integration commissioning,” meaning that the parts were joined to make the whole.
“More than 600 people worked more than 500,000 man-hours to prepare Thunder Horse for sail out to its permanent location in the Gulf,” she says.
Now it’s time for a repeat performance. Nothing says “job well done” better than being hired to do the job again, and that’s the position Kiewit is in.
The company is working on another BP platform called Atlantis, with components having arrived from the same suppliers in Louisiana and South Korea.
With quarters to sleep 60 and weighing 46,856 metric tons, Atlantis is smaller than Thunder Horse. Yet, Atlantis will be the deepest moored platform in the world. Another record for Ingleside.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
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