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Quarters for Forcenergy’s Cook Inlet Osprey platform head to Korea
Kristen Nelson
It was 1986 when the last platform was set in Cook Inlet — this summer another will arrive and be installed for work at Forcenergy Inc.’s Redoubt prospect.
The target date for the Osprey platform to reach Redoubt is July 9 — the quarters for the platform were expected to leave Anchorage the last week in April for the platform fabrication yard in Korea.
“This is somewhat dependent upon transportation schedules of barges and vessels, but right now we’re estimating we will be loading up those quarters the week of April 24,” Gary Carlson, vice president for Alaska of Forcenergy Inc., told PNA April 19 as the newspaper went to press.
The barge is on the way from Seattle, he said, to take the Osprey platform quarters, which were constructed by VECO in Anchorage, to Korea to be loaded on the platform.
The quarters will be rolled out to a Crowley barge, Carlson said, similar to the loading for other modules, and then the sea fastenings will be checked and a condition survey done.
Once the quarters are loaded on the barge, sea fastening is done by a firm that specializes in that type of work, he said, a marine surveyor will the inspect to make sure that the fastenings have been done properly.
About two weeks to Korea From Anchorage, the barge will go to Homer where it will be loaded on a heavy-lift vessel, and its sea fastenings and condition rechecked. And from there, Carlson said, it’s about a two-week trip to the shipyard in Korea, where the barge is expected about the third week in May.
The barge will also be used in platform installation, so when it reaches the shipyard in Korea, they’ll take the barge and quarters off and put the platform tower on the heavy lift vessel, Carlson said. The platform deck will be put on the barge, and then the barge will be put on the heavy-lift vessel. The quarters go on top.
When the heavy-lift vessel leaves Korea there will be three pieces of cargo: the tower; the barge with the deck and the quarters; and the pilings that will be used to fasten the platform to the floor of Cook Inlet.
Carlson said that Forcenergy has had people at the shipyard periodically during construction. There are some minor modifications being done now, and there is an engineer there for that work.
The heavy-lift vessel is scheduled to leave the shipyard May 29 or 30, and arrive in Port Graham, across Kachemak Bay from Homer, around June 12.
The heavy-lift vessel will leave the barge and the tower in the water there and the tower will be mated to the deck. Carlson said that work would take around three weeks.
The target date is July 9 to set the Osprey platform at Redoubt Shoal. After that, Carlson said, the piles will be driven and the platform leveled. Installation of the platform will take around a month.
Rig being modified for Osprey Then the drilling rig, Nabors 429, will be picked up. Nabors 429 is a former Pool rig from the North Slope that is being modified for Forcenergy in Anchorage. The rig is modular, Carlson said, and the two large cranes on the Osprey platform will be used to put the rig in place.
Rigging up will probably take six weeks with the first drilling is planned for the end of September, Carlson said. The company has a permit for five exploration wells at Redoubt.
The Redoubt leases were the first Forcenergy acquired in Alaska — in October 1996. The company operates the West McArthur River field — an offshore accumulation produced from a drill site at West Foreland — and holds a number of oil and gas leases in the Cook Inlet area.
The Osprey platform was originally to have been in place by fall 1999, but the project was held up by low oil prices, a Forcenergy bankruptcy and reorganization and the withdrawal of Unocal Alaska Resources from the Redoubt development project.
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