Heavyweight casting heads for North Sea
One of Valemon’s cast nodes, the largest ever produced by Vulcan SFM, leaving the Brightside Lane foundry.
Vulcan SFM, has despatched the heaviest casting it has ever produced for offshore use – a 100 tonne cast node for use in the North Sea’s largest gas field.
The company, which is Sheffield Forgemasters’ specialist offshore technology and project management division, specialises in high-strength castings and forgings for use in rigs and other constructions for offshore oil and gas exploration.
The casting is the second and final node produced as part of a £3m contract with Dutch company Heerema. The castings will form high strength and fatigue resistant nodal joints to connect the main leg and brace tubulars which make up the jacket of an offshore oil platform.
The castings have an integral trunnion and with these and two other castings also supplied by Sheffield Forgemasters the massive 9,200 tonne jacket for the Valemon platform will be lifted and rotated onto its mooring location.
Ian Nicholls, Managing Director of Vulcan SFM, said: “The cast nodes for Heerema are part of a six-casting contract to supply the nodes, padeyes and hubs which will be the sole lifting points for the Valemon jacket when it is installed for service on the Valemon gas and condensate field, off the coast of Norway.
“The jacket will weigh more than 9,000 tonnes when it is lifted into place and it will then support a deck of around 10,000 tonnes so these components are not only lifting a lot of weight in one direction, they will be supporting an even higher weight once the deck is installed.
“The castings are made in a specially developed material offering a balance of strength toughness and weldability. The strength is developed through heat treatment involving water quenching and this is the biggest casting we have ever quenched, which has been made possible by the investments we have made in our quenching facilities.
The Valemon platform, to be located roughly 160 kilometres west of Bergen, will consist of a steel jacket and feature separation facilities for gas, condensate and water. The steel jacket of the platform will be 157m tall, installed at a water depth of 135m, supporting an eight-storey living quarters building – operating in some of the world’s most extreme conditions.
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