Statia Terminals Inc., Miami, by yearend expects to begin receiving oil supertankers at a new transshipment site in the Caribbean Sea.
Crude offloaded from vessels moored at the installation, being assembled in 212 ft of water off the island of St. Eustatius, is to be shipped to temporary storage at a Statia tank farm on the island.
Crude stored at the tank farm later is loaded aboard smaller tankers for delivery to Gulf of Mexico refineries.
Transshipment of crude oil is considered a safer option than lightering at sea.
St. Eustatius, governed by Netherlands, is part of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It lies 190 miles east-southeast of Puerto Rico.
MAJOR COMPONENTS
The St. Eustatius transshipment site's major components include a 41 ft wide centenary anchor leg mooring (CALM) buoy weighing 355 short tons and a 450 short ton gravity type, pipeline end manifold (PLEM). the items were fabricated by Brown & Root Inc., Houston, at its Greens Bayou yard near the Houston Ship Channel across Galveston Bay.
Brown & Root built the components under a contract from Statia's prime contractor Sofec Inc., Houston, a subsidiary of FMC Corp. Sofec began work on the transshipment project contract late last year.
The CALM, the first built by Brown & Root at Greens Bayou, is among the largest designed by Sofec.
Statia's CALM transshipment buoy can moor supertankers as large as 520,000 dwt with more than 3 million bbl of crude oil capacity. Smaller tankers are expected to use the transshipment site to offload crude destined for local markets.
Crude is to flow from the buoy and PLEM to shore through a 48 in. subsea pipeline. Design capacity of transshipment components is rated at about 100,000 bbl/hour.
Brown & Root began fabricating oil transfer system components for the project in February 1994 and finished manufacturing the items in August. The company in early September loaded out the CALM buoy and PLEM at the Greens Bayou yard dock for delivery to St. Eustatius.
PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT
Charles Etheridge, Sofec vice-president of engineering, said Statia's transshipment systems were designed to protect the environment and assure operating safety.
For example, to prevent spills resulting from damage to the CALM's floating hose strings, Sofec used self-energized marine breakaway couplings. Similarly, to guard against accidental oil releases caused by damage to underbuoy hoses, the company included fail-safe, hydraulically actuated valves in the unit's design that allow Statia to isolate the subsea pipeline.
Terminal operators in Statia's control room on St. Eustatius can monitor things such as line pressures, valve positions, and mooring hawser loads by continuous radio telemetric data.
Equipment provided by Sofec for the project included valves, a production swivel, and electrical and hydraulic materials.
