Audacia has successfully installed her largest ever PLET in S-mode, concluding several years of in-house engineering, fabrication and testing. The pipeline end termination structure is so heavy, production crew had to install separately to the connector head. It’s also so tall and wide, it only just fit through the tensioners and over the stinger.

Connecting the Barossa field to the future Darwin Pipeline Duplication

Audacia and her support team of Fortitude, Alegria, Felicity and Fortress are laying the 262-kilometer-long Barossa Gas Export Pipeline (GEP). The 26-inch diameter pipeline will connect the Barossa field development to the future Darwin Pipeline Duplication, transporting natural gas to the Darwin LNG facility in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Landing the PLET on its mudmat foundations

Project Manager, Dennis Telders, says “To make it work, we had to come up with a design that worked in S-mode, so over the stinger, as opposed to J-mode, over the side.”

To prepare for installing the payload, the in-house design was tested extensively last year. The hard work paid off. Offshore crew landed the PLET safely onto its mudmat foundations, installed to pinpoint accuracy earlier in the campaign by Fortitude.

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