Lebus system fitted on world's largest pipe laying vessel
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In the Groove The bulletin of Lebus International Engineers GmbH Issue 9: Summer 2012 Lebus system fitted on world’s largest pipe laying vessel The world’s largest pipe laying vessel is nearing completion in the Keppel shipyard in Singapore with Lebus spooling technology at the heart of its operations. Pipe laying barges are propelled by anchor winches pulling the vessel towards anchors set down ahead by tug boats. Without smooth spooling of the winches, the entire operation is stalled. The Castorone will be the flagship pipe laying vessel of Italian offshore oil and gas contractor Saipem, a division of the Italian energy company Eni. Castorone is designed for high productivity operations in extreme environments. It already has offshore contracts worth €1.5bn and it has not even gone to sea yet. In 2014 it will travel to Australia to install the gas export pipeline (GEP) on the Ichthys LNG project for INPEX. It will install 889km of 42-inch diameter subsea pipeline in water depths of up to 275m, connecting the offshore central processing facility to the onshore processing facility in Darwin. But before that, it will be in the Gulf of Mexico next year to install 350km of 20-inch diameter pipeline in waters up to 2,100m deep for the Walker Ridge project. Lebus delivered 11 sets of sleeves that are installed on the drums of the winches that propel the barge at speeds of up to 14 knots. To move the vessel forward, tug boats unspool the high capacity wire rope on eight anchor winches on each side of the vessel and drive them forward. They carry the anchors and set them down onto the sea bed ahead. Saipem’s Castorone As the winches are turned, the vessel moves towards the anchors, laying down pipeline at the back as it moves forward. A dynamic positioning system keeps the 330m-long vessel steady at all times. Lebus also supplied sleeves for the vessel’s main 600t crane and two pipe-handling cranes, which each have a lifting capacity of 52 tonnes. For the vessel, Redaelli supplied a wire rope measuring 3,850m long and 152mm in diameter, and weighing 420 tonnes. The rope is stored on, and pulled by, massive Rema traction winches. Costa Concordia salvage operation looks to Lebus drum sleeves Titan Salvage of the USA and Italy’s Micoperi have begun work to salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which capsized off the coast of Italy in January 2012, killing 32 of its passengers. The project is expected to take a year and will cost more than €200m. Lebus is supplying drum sleeves for the winches that will be used to pull the 114,000t vessel to port after it has been made upright and filled with airbag-type flotation devices. Lebus has supplied equipment to other high profile salvage operations in the past, notably the raising of the Russian submarine Kursk, after it exploded in the Barents Sea, by Dutch contractors Smit and Mammoet in 2001. The capsized Costa Concordia

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Engineers’ Corner Interview with Tim Seidenather, managing director for quality & production Lebus quality control Lebus multi-layer wire rope spooling systems are designed for moving extremely heavy loads. How do you ensure safety? “First of all, as a company, we meet EN ISO 9001 quality management norm. This is the international standard for enterprises documenting their qualification for quality management on all operating levels, from purchasing to distribution. We have been certified to EN ISO 9001 since 1994.” Do any markets have their own special standards - for example offshore...