- Production platform on its way from Seattle to Southern Alaska
- Processing plant nears completion
- Pipe-laying vessel starts laying connecting pipeline
Luxembourg, 21 May 2015: Deutsche Oel & Gas S.A. is right on course with the construction of its production infrastructure in its Kitchen Lights Unit natural gas and crude oil production region. Key milestones have been reached, both in the construction of the production platform and with the subsea connecting pipeline and the processing plant. This construction progress has laid the ideal foundations for Deutsche Oel & Gas S.A. to start producing natural gas in Southern Alaska before the end of this year.
The construction of the processing plant on the Kenai Peninsula in the Nikiski region is currently the farthest advanced: The processing plant is already around 90% complete. Once production commences, it will separate the natural gas extracted from well KLU#3 from impurities such as water and other substances. The processing plant is strategically located just a few hundred metres from an existing feed-in point to a supply pipeline.
The Deutsche Oel & Gas S.A. experts have also made considerable progress with the subsea connecting pipeline over the past few weeks: The twelve-metre sections of the pipeline were coated with concrete and have been transported from Port MacKenzie to the future site of the production platform. From there, a pipe-laying vessel began the pipe-laying work for the around 22.5 kilometres of pipeline last week. This vessel can weld together three of the twelve-metre sections of pipe at a time and test them – laying up to 800 metres of pipeline a day.
The most complex sub-project, the construction of the production platform, is also proceeding according to plan. The special-purpose vessel MS Svenja, which will carry out the installation of the production platform, left the port of Singapore at the beginning of May, and has now arrived in the Kitchen Lights Unit. The production platform also left its winter home in Seattle last week, and is currently on its way to Alaska.
“We are now at a particularly important phase of our project,” explained Kay Rieck, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Deutsche Oel & Gas S.A. “We have worked hard with our partners over the past few years to establish our own production infrastructure and lay the necessary foundations for our natural gas production operations. We are optimistic that we will start producing natural gas before the end of this year.”