File photo Ghana’s quest at playing a pivotal role in the oil and gas industry has received another significant boost with the design and fabrication of two topside FPSO modules at the Takoradi Port by wholly Ghanaian owned Belmet 7.
The two topside FPSO modules, which are a pigging skid and a hang-off platform, are the first to be designed and fabricated in-country, since the discovery of hydrocarbons in the country.
They will help address the turret-bearing challenges of FPSO Kwame Nkrumah and thereby restore it to its full operating capacity.
As part of efforts to rectify the turret-bearing failure, which affected the oil offloading capacity of FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, Tullow Oil in 2018 commissioned a 23-month project for the design, fabrication, installation and integration of an Oil Offloading System (OOSys).
Originally, works on such Oil Offloading Systems are awarded and done outside Ghana.
Tullow Oil awarded the contract to Subsea 7, a subsea engineering, construction and services company, which in turn subcontracted the fabrication of some of the project’s key components to Belmet 7, an Oil and Gas logistics fabrication company based in Takoradi, in December 2018.
The contract involves the design and fabrication of 7 suction piles, pigging skid and a hang-off platform, which are topside FPSO modules.
Of significance is the design and fabrication of the pigging skid and hang-off platform which will be the first to be done in-country since the discovery of oil and gas in Ghana in 2007.
Site Representative of Subsea 7 Theophilus Ofori said all the workers who did the design and fabrication were Ghanaians.
“We are very delighted to have achieved this feat. Almost everything about the pigging skid and hang-off platform was done here in the yard of Belmet 7. It has helped our engineers and the local companies because of the various roles that they all played. What you have witnessed here is we giving true meaning to our ability to participate in our oil and gas sector that is the local content agenda being pursued by the Petroleum Commission.”
He explained that the successful completion of the work will build the confidence of oil and gas operators in Ghana about the possibility of having such modules fabricated in-country.“Normally, fabrication of these modules is done in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and others. If the fabrication had happened outside the country, all the monies and associated benefits would have gone there. Now that we have been able to take on […]