Aquaterra Energy (www.aquaterraenergy.com), a leading global provider of offshore engineering solutions, has designed, fabricated and installed a new Sea Swift platform for PICO Petroleum Integrated Services, which is the lead contractor for Amal Petroleum Co’s (Amapetco) Amal field in the Gulf of Suez (offshore Egypt).

This development will open new opportunities for future co-operation between the two companies in large projects, both in Egypt and the Middle East.

The Sea Swift, which is a ‘conductor supported platform’ (CSP) installed in 23m of water, includes a 385-tonne topside (featuring a helideck and emergency accommodation) with provision for six wells.

The new topside facility for the Amal-C platform involved design, piping, electrical, instrumentation, control systems and technical safety — plus the design of the new sub-sea production pipelines to the Amal-A platform. The project, which took 18 months from design to installation, involved building a bridge link to the neighbouring Amal-B platform and reconfiguring the topside pipework.

George Morrison, managing director of Aquaterra Energy, said: “The deployment of CSPs is increasing, due to growing demand for modularised wellhead platforms that can be built and installed in smaller packages across a number of fabrication yards.

“The bespoke design also negates the need for diver or ROV involvement and any ‘hot work’, which mitigates inherent risk and scheduling problems while cutting incremental costs. In addition, it can potentially increase local content, if this is an economic or political driver for the project.”