Heerema Marine Contractors’ Sleipnir semisubmersible crane vessel (SSCV) completed a 15,300-tonne lift, installing the topsides for Noble Energy’s Leviathan gas platform offshore Israel in the Mediterranean Sea. The installation comes two months after the topsides set sail from Corpus Christi, Texas, in the US Gulf of Mexico. Noble said the Sleipnir SSCV installed two main topsides with a total weight of 24,500 tonnes in less than 20 hours.
Discovered in 2010, Leviathan holds 22 Tcf of gross recoverable reserves, making it one of the world’s largest deepwater gas discoveries of the past decade. Noble, Delek Drilling LP, and Ratio Oil Exploration (1992) LP have invested a combined $3.75 billion for the field’s development, which includes four subsea wells capable of producing more than 300 MMcf/D of natural gas. Two 115-km flowlines will deliver natural gas produced from the field to a fixed platform, with full processing capabilities of 1.2 Bcf/D.
Noble said it will conduct a series of commissioning tests before initiating commercial gas flow by the end of 2019. Jacket and pile installation, production manifold installation, and pipeline installation have already been completed.