Culzean Keeps UK Port Busy

After last week’s successful departure of a power generation module for Total-owned Maersk Oil’s Culzean gas development, Port of Lowestoft in eastern England said July 5 it guided one of its largest ever barges out into the North Sea.

Carrying two bridge sections weighing almost 2,000 metric tons in total, the barge was one of the largest vessels of its kind to visit the Port of Lowestoft, which is owned by Associated British Ports (ABP).

At 122 m long by 30.5 m wide, it was close to the maximum size the port can accommodate. As with the recent power generation module shipment, the bridge sections were constructed by Singapore-based SembCorp Marine within Lowestoft port and are the next important components in the Culzean development – the largest gas field to be developed in UK waters since East Brae in 1990. Sembcorp Marine was awarded a $1bn order in 2015 by Maersk Oil to fit topsides to the Culzean floating storage and offloading vessel in 2015. The field will have capacity to meet around 5% of the UK’s national gas demand.

However ABP's statement said that Culzean is now expected online in 2020; the $4.5bn project originally targeted first gas in 2019.  (Banner photo illustrates how Culzean will look when complete, courtesy of KBR)