The Bayu-Undan offshore project has been awarded Australia’s highest engineering award; the 2006 Sir William Hudson Award for Engineering Excellence.
The award was announced and presented at the 2006 Australian Engineering Excellence Awards gala ceremony held in Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra on 22nd of November. This follows the project winning the 2006 Western Australian Engineering Excellence Award for Resource Developments.
WorleyParsons delivered the Pre-FEED and, via a joint venture, delivered the FEED, detailed engineering and procurement for this project, as well as being heavily involved in managing and supporting the fabrication, transport, installation and commissioning of the facilities. WorleyParsons is also currently executing the long-term Engineering Services Contract to support the operation (by ConocoPhillips) of this facility.
The Bayu-Undan gas and condensate field is located under the Timor Sea, approximately 500 kilometres north-west of Darwin, Australia, in a water depth of approximately 80 metres. The Bayu-Undan reservoir contains over three trillion cubic feet of gas and is also rich in associated liquids.
The Bayu-Undan offshore facilities comprise the single largest offshore complex in the southern hemisphere, and include the world’s most sophisticated offshore liquids stripping plant. The Bayu-Undan complex consists of:
- The Drilling Production and Processing Platform (DPP)
- The Compression, Utilities and Quarters Platform (CUQ)
- A Wellhead Platform (WP1)
- A Floating Storage and Offloading vessel (FSO)
The DPP and CUQ are bridge linked and make up the Central Production and Processing Complex (CPP). The CPP topsides facilities weigh close to 26,000 metric tonnes, and sit on top of two 8-pile steel support frames (jackets), which weigh close to 20,000 metric tonnes. The DPP includes drilling, pre-treatment, processing, dehydration, liquids recovery and production wells. The CUQ includes gas compression for reinjection, utilities and living quarters.
WP1 is an unmanned wellhead platform with two primary deck levels and 1,500 metric tonnes of topsides. The FSO is the world’s first multi-use separate propane, butane and condensate Floating Storage and Offloading vessel. It is permanently positioned 2.2km from the CPP and is linked to it by four subsea pipelines.
The Bayu-Undan facilities are currently producing over 1,100 Million Standard Cubic Feet per day of gas and over 100,000 barrels per day of liquids product (propane, butane and condensate). Some of the dry gas is feed to the recently commissioned Darwin LNG plant (via a sub-sea gas pipeline) and the remainder is recycled and reinjected into the reservoir.
This project set many new engineering benchmarks, overcame significant challenges (including those associated with cyclone prone local environment) and is producing above design capacity and at very high availability.
WorleyParsons created numerous innovations on this project and these, coupled with outstanding execution of this world-scale development, was a key reason for the project receiving the Sir William Hudson award.
This is the most prestigious award in Australian engineering and is a credit to the large team of WorleyParsons personnel who contributed so much; from the very start of Pre-FEED through to the final commissioning.
