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Hazira , Nov. 4

A 1400-TONNE structure, part of the 8,000-tonne mega process platform for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, has already been loaded on a floating deck on the Tapti shore of Larsen & Toubro's Hazira facility, the finishing touches being given to it.

"This is the largest process platform that has ever been constructed in India," says Mr V.N. Desai, Senior Deputy General Manager of the Modular Fabrication Yard of L&T, who is part of the project team for the platform. The entire facility will be handed over to ONGC by January 31, 2004.

The other sections of the mega platform are also almost ready. The 1665-tonne East deck, which will complement the 1400-tonne west deck which has been already loaded, is also ready for transfer to the floating deck. This will be done by means of hydraulic cranes and ramps, a moving event indeed for the project team and the workers who had worked on the platforms for over a year now. Both the decks will then be towed down the river Tapti and out its mouth into the Arabian sea and taken to the ONGC site for installation.

There are the other sections too - the 1200-tonne living quarter deck, topped by a helideck, which will accommodate 50 persons who would be working on the offshore well nearly 200 km off the coast, the 1500-t turbo generator module which will generate 30 MW of electricity and a 1100-tonne process gas compressor module. Then there are desalination units as well.

All these will be installed on an 8-legged support structure - the jacket - which sits on the seabed, with the modules installed one after the other using a derrick barge with a lifting capacity of 2,400 tonnes. L&T has outsourced this work to J Ray McDermott Eastern Hemisphere Ltd.

One of the platform's main functions is to draw seawater at a depth of 30 metres below sea level, filter, deoxygenate and raise the pressure so as to be suitable for injection whose pressure will force out the crude from Bombay High North (BHN) wells. (The project is part of ONCG's redevelopment facility to enhance output of oil and gas from Bombay High.) The water will be transported to the BHN platform through a pipeline over a bridge which is also constructed by L&T. In fact, the entire platform will be connected to the existing BHN platform in mid-sea.

The extracted natural gas received from the BHN platform will be received by the newly installed deck and compressed and sent back to BHN for dehydration and later, transportation to the onshore terminal.

Almost 3,000 workers each working 12 hours a day for 30 days a month have been employed on the project, says Mr Desai. The size of the project has called for varying labour requirements, a lot of which has been outsourced to certified labour contractors, he says. ONGC had awarded the contract to Engineers India Ltd as Rs 821 crore which in turn subcontracted the platform construction and commissioning to L&T at Rs 606 crore.

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