Countdown is on for tow of massive Hebron oil platform to field off Newfoundland
BULL ARM, N.L. — It was made with more concrete than the Empire State Building — and it moves.
Dignitaries cut ceremonial mooring chains on the massive Hebron oil platform Tuesday, marking the wind-up of construction for a $14-billion project that employed more than 7,500 people at its height.
Geoff Parker, senior project manager, said a slip form for the gravity-based structure tanks, which sit mostly under water, used more concrete than the famed New York City skyscraper. The base is 130 metres in diameter, required 132,000 cubic metres of concrete and has 52 well slots.
Combined with the topsides, where about 220 people will live and work, the structure towers 230 metres high and weighs 750,000 tonnes. It will be towed next month from Bull Arm on Trinity Bay to its destination in the Jeanne D’Arc Basin about 350 kilometres southeast of St. John’s.