Brambles Heavy Contracting (M) Sdn Bhd loaded out the Sarawak Shell F6K-A jacket on self-propelled trailers on 15 March at the yard of Malaysia Shipyard & Engineering in Pasir Gudang.
The F6K-A jacket is for a gas compression platform in the Central Luconia geological province in the South China Sea which is being developed to supply the Malaysian liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Bintulu, Sarawak.
The jacket was loaded out using a combination of 76 axle lines of Brambles Nicolas MDEM self-propelled and MDE trailers arranged in four separate blocks under two lateral loadout beams fixed to the jacket. The configuration and capacity of each trailer block was arranged to suit the jacket’s offset centre of gravity.
An all-up weight of 1,811t including jacket, trailers and support steelwork took less than six hours to load out to a 95m x 30m barge, including set-down of the jacket to sea fastenings and trailer retrieval. Brambles was responsible for the complete operation including barge management, ballasting, provision of linkspan bridge, ballast calculations and mooring analysis.
Brambles Heavy Contracting (M) Sdn Bhd is the Malaysian joint venture company established in 1998 by Oilvest and Brambles Heavy Contracting Europe, parent company of Econofreight and Lastra.
Brambles anticipates that this will prove to be the first of many wheeled loadout operations in Malaysia because of the ‘substantial benefits’ of the method. According to Brambles, these benefits are: • Several structures can be fabricated in the same yard without having to be laid out in line for skidding.
• Loadout sequences are not limited to the structures closest to the loadout quay.
• Greater flexibility in barge selection is possible due to the low tonnage per square metre imposed compared with skidding.
• Redundant structural strength in modules can be reduced due to the trailer system’s hydraulically distributed suspension system.
