- Golden anniversary for Liebherr-Werk Nenzing. The crane manufacturer celebrates order receipt for their 1,000th offshore crane
- These will be the first RL-K series cranes for Total, and the first Ex-rated knuckle-boom cranes for Liebherr
Liebherr Offshore Crane Division has almost completed another project with long-term partner TOTAL. Three state-of-the-art ram luffing knuckle-boom cranes of the type RL-K 4200 will be delivered for Total’s Egina floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.
The oil and gas market is a truly global one, with companies from all around the world participating to finally making a project a reality. For Total’s Egina FPSO this is certainly true, with the French giant commanding the project, Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries building the hull and partial topsides plus assisting local Nigerian companies in establishing manufacturing facilities for approximately 15,000t of steelwork in line with the Local Content legislation. International partners include CNOOC, Petrobras and Sapetro.
So what better project for Liebherr to build the cranes and supply them from their Rostock facility in Northern Germany?
"Our first dealings with Total go all the way back to 1985, but our more recent involvement included cranes for all of the New Build FPSO projects such as Dalia in 2005, Pazflor in 2009, Clov in 2013 and now with Egina," said Gordon Clark, sales director of the Liebherr offshore crane division.
"We also have a number of cranes on several of Total’s fixed platforms."
For Egina, Liebherr will deliver three of their newest series of cranes, the RL-K 4200 knuckle-boom cranes, all Ex-rated. These will be the first RL-K series cranes for Total, and the first Ex-rated knuckle-boom cranes for Liebherr, so a great milestone for both companies.
Technical details
Egina is a deep water project, set 130 km from the Nigerian coast in 1,750m of water. It is expected to be online in 2017 and to produce 200,000 b/d, with on-board storage capacity of up to 2.3 million barrels. The vessel is 330m-long, 61m beam and 33.5m-deep.
Testing of the first unit will be carried out with the customer on the test area in Germany in August, with delivery coming later in the year.
Modern test environment at Liebherr in Rostock
Currently, the cranes are being constructed at Liebherr`s modern facilities in the harbour city of Rostock, northern Germany. To support this new range of cranes, Liebherr developed an ultra-modern test environment to load and function-test the cranes before delivery in accordance with all relevant offshore regulations. This significantly reduces the risk of problems on the customer’s job site.
"It certainly gives you peace of mind to have the equipment fully tested with your customer before shipment," says Clark.
"With our excellent transport facilities in Rostock, such as a 300m deep-water-quay for sea-going vessels, loading the finished product on to an international carrier means we can be the perfect partner for our worldwide client base", he adds.
Please contact Liebherr for more information.