Constructing Mammoth Underwater Gas Pipeline | Building The Biggest | Spark

[Music] britain is running out of gas at an alarming rate it is facing its greatest ever energy crisis the solution lies 1200 kilometers away deep beneath the norwegian sea where 300 billion cubic meters of gas have been discovered over 5 000 men are locked in a race against time to release the gas construct a refinery and send it to the uk along the world's biggest ever underwater pipeline named after a viking ship the omen langer gas field will supply the uk's energy needs for years to come the gas will be pumped from the ocean floor to nihama on the norwegian coast before traveling 1200 kilometers to easington in england there is however a slight problem there is no pipe delay will take something very special the lb 200 inside 370 men are working round the clock heading northwards towards the gas field at a speed of four kilometers a day it's a floating factory basically it's a large assembly line it's a repetitive motion time and time again of putting the pipes together weld them together to make one long assembly from one point point a to point b it's going to pump gas from niaham and norway to easington uk 900 kilometers away the most crucial component of the whole operation is starting its slow journey to the gas field the template is an extraordinary piece of bright yellow engineering that is the key to releasing the gas this giant tap will control the flow of the gas to the process plant in no way it also acts as a guide for the drilling apparatus the template is really the heart of the subsea production system that's where the gas comes up it it's gathered there and it's sent to shore and without the template you won't have any gas to shore it's really the key element of the whole production system getting the template to the site is one thing getting it to its final resting place needs a monster enter the dutch heavy lifting barge the alph 71 000 tons of immense ocean-going lifting power that costs a staggering 500 000 dollars a day to hire it's the biggest barge train barge in the world size roughly 200 meters long and 95 meters wide and from deck to keel it's 52 meters high and if you take the boom up from the cranes up to the keel you are more or less 200 meters the biggest block of the crane can lift 7.1 million kilograms which is 7100 tons if you want an easier figure to compare then it's more or less 7 000 cars each crane so we have two of those huge grains and they can lift together 14 000 cars you would wonder why you should need two types seven thousand tons of lifting capacity to lift the templates of 1150 tons the reason is that the combination of weight and depth is actually exceeding the standard setup of this vessel the template installation will be tricky because the target zone is a kilometer beneath the surface in total darkness it will take several hours to lower it to the seabed the thealf then has to maneuver the template into an exact position above the gas field where it will be secured to the ocean floor but at such depths and enough from wild conditions above and below the surface hitting the target is like trying to find a pin at the bottom of a swimming pool while wearing a blindfold first the theath needs to be set for the lift to reach the bottom of the ocean over six kilometers of brand new cable has to be threaded onto each crane at a cost of a million dollars by looping the wire around the pulleys just six times instead of the usual 40 they will sacrifice lifting power but will gain the depth needed this is the first time that anything like this has ever been attempted at present we we reefed already one of our cranes it's our quartzite crane the block is at present at the depths which we require for installing the hormalanian structures today we are wreathing the starboard grain with a few more hours careful preparation the theolf should be ready for the lift if all goes to plan they will attempt the lowering within the next 12 hours the situation is really that everything has to go right the first time and that's that's the special aspect of operations like this we can't compromise when we lift it off it's a point of no return so i'm looking a lot forward to the coming days but with conditions turning nasty will they attempt to lift the template if they don't go ahead it will be very costly [Applause] crucial decisions have to be made bad weather is playing havoc at the gas field to attempt a lowering of the template now would just be too dangerous several hundred kilometers south conditions are still good the lb 200 is on schedule slowly but surely heading northwards towards the template in charge is jimmy peacock he's been in the business for over 21 years he has laid thousands of kilometers of pipe but this is special they're 12 meters long or 40 feet whichever you prefer it's 23 mil or one inch thick almost one inch thick it's uh 44 inches in diameter which is a large piece of pipe it's also got roughly six mil of master coat and then 80 ml of concrete the concrete coat is what is used to keep the pipeline sitting on the bottom so it doesn't flow to the surface all that added together which makes up to about 20 to 21 tons the finished pipeline will need a million tons of steel and a million tons of concrete the 124 000 pipes required are shipped to the lb 200 continuously the southern section which we're laying this year is 528 kilometers long we're trying to lay a minimum of three and a half to four and a half kilometers of pipe today to keep a steady stream that way we can meet the deadlines before the end of the season below deck 370 men are working flat out around the clock welding on a new piece of pipe every six minutes [Music] right now where we're standing is on the main deck starboard side of the lv200 this is the area where we offload the pipe from the pipe carriers onto the deck store them here in the storage racks until they're put into the beveling stations beveled with the end preps for your mainline welding and dj welding that's known as the pfm pipe piercing machine it's actually puts a bevel onto the pipe so everybody's still loving [Music] and then from there two of the 12 meter lengths are welded together make one 24 meter length is what we call a double joint [Music] from there it goes inside into the main line that's what we lead the firing line with we've got stations one through eight one through four we do all the welding to put the the pipes together to make them one continuous they line it the planet you know because the planets the galaxy is going along the center and this machine is going around the pipe that makes the job more safe faster and easier what i'm doing here is a visual inspection of this well just making sure there isn't any surface defects this is a good weld i'm quite happy with it to go through the ndt station five is where they do the scan of each weld to make sure there's no [Music] defects [Music] station six is where they put the survey wrap each ring sleeve which seals from any water being able to get to the bare metal on the pipe and then it goes to stations seven and eight we put a foam infield to protect it from any trowel boards and give it a smooth surface on the bottom nine meters nine meter head shower we've had an exceptional day just last week we laid 5.3 kilometers in the 24 hour period which was amounts to 216 double joints welded together in a 24 hour period which is exceptionally well in the offshore industry to meet the deadline the lb 200 is up against it the bad weather hampering the template lift is on its way south and could bring pipeline to a standstill jimmy and his crew are facing a cooling schedule and an unforgiving seabed in the waters around the gas field the sea floor is like a lunar landscape the result of a giant underwater landslide 8 000 years ago it's horrendous terrain for pipelining but to make things worse they've come up on a sheer cliff 200 meters high normally offshore jobs the ec bed is fairly flat so it's actually all melania which is so special so it requires special solutions and that solution is the spider an all-terrain underwater excavator it's been specially designed to cut trenches through the most hostile of seabeds with the underwater cliff standing between the pipe and the template the spider is ready for action the idea came from a swiss forester machine which is an extreme machine to work in in 30 to 40 degrees slopes like a climbing machine and we adopted that technology to actually use it under water these legs can be moved to adapt and actually level the machine and work like normal the spider operates over 800 meters a depth that no man can survive in and that no man has ever seen with his own eyes it's controlled by halvor snelligan who relies on computer images to remotely operate the underwater path clearance this screen here shows the spider sitting on the seabed so when we sit down on the seabed we level up the machine so it's level when we are doing the work we then dig the um the claws into the seabed so we don't slide and then we just start the high power pumps and we we cut up the soil and we suck it out we don't actually dig it we have a very accurate positioning system during the operation the visibility is well basically zero so we depend entirely on these graphical monitors it's like a video game the spider has a tough job it has already cleared over 10 000 tons of rock and clay from the seabed we have now dredged all the steepest part of the whole oil melon area ready to delay the pipelines it's been a lot of work in a very short time but now we are nearly finished so uh now i'm very pleased [Music] an enormous building site the size of 120 soccer fields is being constructed on the norwegian coast [Music] when complete it'll process 70 million cubic meters of raw gas every day the gas has to flow continuously but at such huge depths sea temperatures can drop below zero that could freeze the gas clog the template and stop the gas flow to show the solution lies inside these tanks in these tanks we have a 30 million liters of antifreeze liquid the anti-freeze liquid of course will be to prevent the well screen to freeze on the way from the subsidy production tree and up to the onshore terminal [Music] the finished factory will need over 300 kilometers of pipe and more than 15 000 valves to clean and dry the gas this is where the gas will arrive and depart two pipes coming in from the ormond langer field one going out to brew the gas will spend just 10 minutes in the processed plant at kneehammer before heading out on a two-day trip to britain work isn't just taking place above ground beneath the surface a network of caves is being carved out of solid rock when complete these chambers will be vast holding tanks for the light oil that comes off with the gas the method of construction explosives the explosives team is setting the next blast to obliterate the chunk of rock they're standing on and level it with the cavern floor below stage 1 charging boreholes stage 2 carefully connecting the detonation system stage three evacuation underground explosions create extremely dangerous shock waves only key personnel can remain in the cabin the chief blaster arrives on the cabin floor in an evacuation vehicle he carries carefully mapped detonation coordinates and oh yes in his pocket he has a box of matches three minutes after you slip the fuse so then the car better work let's see here as the multiple charges explode over 5000 tons of solid rock disintegrates throughout the caves the pressure wave creates pulses of fog as everything settles the chief blaster gives the okay and the clear-up begins they come back with their heavy machinery and they start mucking up the rock and they continue that for approximately 20 hours and then they start to do it all over again how many blasts left probably around six seven for this bench that we're busting now and then we have some smaller stuff left to do later we hope to be finished in one or two months with this it's noisy dirty work and it's going on round the clock deadlines have to be met if they are going to be ready for the gas [Music] back at the template a storm has blown up overnight in the morning sea conditions are even worse with fear scales flashing rain and wild seas the template has moved away from the field meteorologist paul hutchin is starting to feel the pressure well the solar conditions are looking for to to do the lift is um no more than sort of moderate or fresh winds that don't any strong winds at all for the operation they also would be looking for moderate seas certainly not rough seas so we're looking at seas where you've not got very much white water we've just reached 34 knots and that's uh that's gale force so it's uh it's quite windy and as you can see it's uh it's very rough seas as well so it's um yes quite spectacular conditions at the moment especially for august we have a limitation in wave height because we don't want the barge to move too much if the barge hits the skirts before we manage to lift it clear that would be an awkward situation in addition the same wave criteria is there to prevent the crane vessel to move too much because then we get too much loads in the slings so it's a number of things that can really knock us out lowering the 26 million dollar template is dependent on a one thousand dollar ball that will help paul predict something called the significant wave it's a significant wave is it's a statistically derived wave so it's not a wave you can actually see um but it's a wave that would be most likely to be observed and that's that's what we forecast at the moment as i say we've got about 2.8 almost three meters of significant wave we're looking for for a lot less than that and um at train level up to 45 knots of wind and they're looking for a lot less than that as well to do the job so so it's just it's far too wild at the moment good morning gentlemen and ladies paul can we start with the weather forecast please well we're in a very unsettled spell of weather just now as as we all know um the significant wave it's running about 2.4 2.5 meters at the moment and we do expect it to gradually decay but i think by the time we get through into the late morning tomorrow the significant wave i think will pick up above two meters the forecast means the template installation could start this afternoon a buzz goes round the ship but with the weather changing by the minute there may not be enough time to complete the lowering based on the weather forecast we have a small chance it's not not a big period for this evening this night and early morning tomorrow morning the other thing which is not very promising then there isn't a second gap for a long time the weather forecast it looks completely different than the forecast which you gave us yesterday uh can you explain that because yesterday you gave us a weather forecast which was going through the weekend to very good conditions he certainly looks at the the seas are decaying a little bit quicker today and the winds are picking up a little bit quicker tomorrow um unfortunately forecasts do change the the fact is the trough is pushing across through the course of friday um is deeper and therefore there's more wind associated with it it's unfortunate but um that that's the reason for the change in story typical norwegian somewhere with the possibility of the lift happening this afternoon it's just a matter of waiting for the next forecast but it isn't good news i've just had to tell the guys that it looks like the weather window we were hoping for tonight and tomorrow is not there anymore or certainly not the length they want anyway so instead of having our 20 or 24-hour weather window it's now down to sort of 12 hours so it's just not enough really to perform the lift you know weather forecasting it's a tricky business and occasionally forecasts go wrong and you have to go down and and inform the client it's it's not nice but unfortunately it's part of the job the only thing we now need is the right weather window to start unfortunately the weather will come up tomorrow morning and pretty strong as well so that means that we just have to wait with the summer nearly over the longer they wait the fewer the chances of installing the template hiring out at half a million dollars a day the field sits idle at the ormond langa gas field weatherman paul has forecast rough conditions for the next few days [Music] delays are causing great concern the pipe is moving ever closer and the template needs to start his journey to the bottom of the ocean soon the ormond langer field will supply the uk with gas for the next 40 years but it's been far longer in the making 65 million years ago norway's craggy landscape was forming rivers were eroding the rock and washing it out to sea there it was squashed down into solid sandstone a reservoir for trapping gas by looking at samples of the sandstone geologists created a picture of the prehistoric seabed quite high some of those are up to to pebble sizes yeah which is amazing and this is actually very interesting because this pebble here is rounded so that may have been in the short face [Music] on an ancient shoreline 65 million years ago the gas has been here since dinosaurs roamed the planet it was formed out of the decaying remains of dead sea creatures the gas in our melania formed in rocks of jurassic age that is when the dinosaurs lived on earth and it moved into the much younger rocks uh the sandstone unit the rest of our unit in all melania maybe as late as 10 million years ago but it's interesting to look at the composition of the class because they they may tell us something about the source area yeah the gas is actually trapped in open space between individual sign grains so it's not a big hole it's not a big cavern it's actually a millimeter scale uh pore space porosity as we we call it in between individual sign grains the the sandstone itself is very high quality sandstone which is very typical of the ormond sandstone the special thing about the sandstone in or melonia is that it's very high quality and as this sample shows it has extremely high porosity and demonstrate the porosity by blowing into the the sandstone and a lot of the air that comes out of my mouth goes directly into the sandstone because there is more than 30 percent of open space in here so it's uh it's a very high quality rock it's one of the best reservoir rocks that we have on the norwegian shelf so it's very well suited for containing the gas in all menominee with such a vast ocean to choose from how did they know where the gas was the story began many years ago it was 1984 a research ship was out surveying the norwegian sea scanning the ocean floor they produced thousands of meters of information that ended up in a store room they remained there gathering dust for the next six years until the oil company hedro dusted them down and made an amazing discovery i gave ty enux and he was my most experienced geophysicist the task of doing some reconnaissance work on seismic lines in the deeper part of the basin a few days later he came into my office one day at night very enthusiastic he'd been discovering some very interesting stuff on this data it took me like five minutes to get equally enthusiastic because we both saw that this looked very promising the most important observations he made was the these tiny black spots here called flat spots and those are actually indications of hydrocarbon water contact and we thought it was gas they knew this two-centimeter trace was an incredible find buried in reams of identical data it could be priceless so what happened next in that that was that i took contact with the top manager present and by the end it was convinced and said okay you have all the funds you ask for but just keep this secret anyone who is leaking information will get sacked a handful of trusted employees were assembled to dig a little deeper sworn to secrecy the chosen few began to delve the depths in a multi-billion dollar quest it was a an ordinary day at work and i remember came to me and he said you have to come into my office i have something to show you and he closed the door and he said this is top secret if you tell anything about it to anybody it will be very serious we knew this could be huge this could be one of the biggest gas fields in the north sea that was realized almost immediately by the team the only way to get a physical proof of gas or oil being present is drilling an explanation well and to drill an exploration well you need to have a license and our goal now was to get the license get the operatorship and then eventually you drill the expression summer 97 we started drilling the field and of course now that was the moment of truth approaching and approaching rather [Music] fast when you got to rig on location first you know get started to drill it was anxiousness because all this work all this everything had to go right of course we've been certain before and it hasn't worked so there's always a great excitement when we drill expiration wells what we're waiting for once we approach the reservoir was what we call a drill break easier to drill sand than shale and you can feel it all the way up to the rig in the way the drilling equipment behaves so i think it was 25th of august that we got a negative drill break so it was kaboom down and then two meters below hosted drill break we had sand on deck then we knew that all the work and predictions john had on was just spot on it was really huge we were pretty sure we found the second largest gas field on the norwegian shelf that's what we felt the whale had proved this is more than 300 billion cubic meters of gas a huge find on any scale worldwide [Music] huge it may be but getting out from below the hostile ocean floor is causing problems the lb 200 pipeline ship has a matter of weeks to meet its deadline it's racing northwards towards the template at a staggering four kilometers a day the lb 200 has to keep moving forward to do that it uses an unusual form of propulsion caging k-e-d-g-e it means to move by acres so that's what we're doing we're crabbing along instead of moving under its own steam it pulls on 14 anchors spread out around it the anchors are moved forward by special tugboats [Music] current position is here and the desired position will be the little blue dot these are the stern anchors here like our main sterns our sevens i'll be repositioning them approximately 700 meters near to the barge one at a time but in choppy seas the boats can't pick up the anchors safely if it becomes too dangerous the barge will come to a standstill in the middle of the ocean if the barge is stationary for too long the pipe will have to be sealed and dropped to the seabed this is a timely expensive and dangerous operation the boats are going to go look at their anchor buoys to see if it's possible to catch them if their men can safely uh connect to the anchor buoys they'll go to work if it's still if they're crewmen on deck determined it's too dangerous they won't catch them later to randy yes sir when you get over there before you go to the starboard six uh go to starboard seven and see if you can grab the midline buoy and drag it back out away from the barge away okay yeah i'll give it a try but as well as still four or five meters here the biggest ones are close to five i believe but we'll give it us right you roger that cam just have a look at it uh if you can we will if you can't we won't yeah unfortunately the sea is too rough and the lb 200 grinds to a halt today was a pretty miserable day because of the weather uh we're in a slow lay period because it's a little bit too up for the anchor handlers to move the anchors safety is the number one goal out here we don't want to get anybody hurt we want everybody to go home the same way they arrived so yeah it's just a little bit too unsafe for the guys with the anchors we will fall behind but uh now it's us against mother nature inside the pipe comes to a standstill the crew can only wait for calmer conditions to return it's a costly delay and the stormy seas are doing the pipe no good at all it might be one inch steel but the pipe still bends it curves twice on the way down in an unsupported s shape if the sea is rough the bends could become overstressed causing damage to the structure of the pipeline when we start to get above seven meters well you start to get into fatigue factors of the pipe which damages the concrete coating surface of it so at that time it's time to put the pipe on the bottom otherwise you're going to have to cut out everything that you played that day by 8 pm the weather's getting worse the pipeline ship is still stationary in the middle of the north sea and jimmy peacock's schedule is in danger it's getting close to the time you will need to consider dropping the pipe off the ship but there's no way he wants to do that today's target we're way off we're laying probably six double joints of pipe today not so good at all but it's better than having to lay the pipe down with it if the wet when the weather does break we've already we've got the pipe up we're ready to roll so as soon as the weather breaks we can take off and start landfill back at the gas field the weather is getting worse lowering the template now will be just too dangerous while they wait for a break in the weather jim gelpie navigator of the remote controlled subs uses the time to prepare for the template installation the subs will track the progress of the template on his journey to the bottom of the sea it will then become the eyes of the engineers as they position and secure the template to the seabed at this point in time we can dive we're just waiting for the sea state to come down so that they can launch the the template and get it through the water column in a uh a safe manner this is where we control the rov from uh basically this is the pilot's chair and the navigator's chair is over there we have various cameras the black box records the video and all the pertinent data from the sub [Music] all right the vehicle just got out of the water uh not too long ago so it's just residual water drops on there there's a manipulator we also have our power monitoring ground fault resistance oh rob you're a skull and a gentleman he's cleaned it up i mean the team likes to be working it's our job and we enjoy our job i have some friends that really think i have the coolest job in the whole world jim and his team are relaxed about the disruption to the schedule but below deck head chef bertis telpillars is getting very concerned about the delay with over 350 hungry mouths to feed 24 hours a day he is running out of food we thought we would be here only for a few days but it's going to be longer and longer and we only have professions for about three three more weeks and that's it then we are empty completely with supplies running short bertas has taken drastic steps is staggering the meals 120 hungry souls wait to be released from behind closed doors [Music] we have four settings a day every six hours one yeah and we have three main courses 24 hours later midnight we have breakfast i have bacon and eggs english breakfast credit and the same at 5 30 in the morning harry potter is the provisions manager when he put in his food order before the field left rotterdam he didn't account for the weather delays now it's quite empty because we are already three weeks on the on the sea now uh when we are in rotterdam yeah they're gonna store this uh totally full harry needs the biggest shopping trolley in the world when he goes to the supermarket it's about 80 000 kilo of uh of meat we use and 20 000 20 25 000 kilo of fish so that's quite a lot i guess what is this of course we just have to wait it's uh it's not such a surprise when there is no action it's not that much fun and with wives and kids at home you'd like to get home as fast as possible on the other hand this is an operation that most of us have been waiting for for a long time so therefore we are fairly tolerant with time running out and the weather getting steadily worse there's a chance the template will have to return to shore will the team's hard work be rewarded or will the whole operation be thrown into chaos the two machines brought in to build the biggest underwater pipeline in the world might be big but they've been tamed by bad weather thankfully at the lb 200 conditions have taken a turn for the better and it's on the move once again going back to normal lake the weather is broken up that the anchor tugs that are able to catch the uh hank of buoys and start moving anchors forwards now we're going back into production and continue laying the pipeline we'll be back into a full swing within the next hour or so and then we'll just keep laying pipe until the next weather front comes through making as much ground as we possibly can it's always good to get back going to work get everybody back in the motor working again it's good news for everybody much further north the weather delays have held up the template installation nearly a week but at last conditions have improved a little and the engineers decide to go for it once we have the right weather then we bring the barge into the stern of the vessel that's under the two big cranes the rigging is prepared and laid out on the top of the template we hook up and once that's done it's it's a lift off lifting off the barge is one of the riskiest parts of the installation the template must be hoisted up quickly to prevent the collision when lifted successfully its journey begins a journey that will last several hours a journey to the bottom of the ocean [Music] moving the vessel around we get it in the right position and then we slowly lower it into the seabed it's a tense moment as the team from hedro gathers to watch the final positioning it needs to be accurate to within two meters even after the template is landed there's still lots of activity going on the rov people eagerly working to close hatches and clean up remove stuff and a number of activities twelve and a half hours after starting the template is securely positioned on the seabed [Music] we have had a lot of struggling with the weather finally we got exactly the right weather and the operation was performed very safe everything went according to procedures and the structure is is perfect on the seabed right now so yeah i'm i'm very happy and very relieved this operation has been a major step towards realizing one of the world's biggest building projects despite the horrendous weather conditions the lb 200 managed to complete the southern half of the pipeline on schedule moving slowly but steadily it reached its underwater target with time to spare the hard work of thousands of men have kept the project bang on schedule for switch on that's when the gas will eventually start to flow from norway to england along the world's longest underwater [Music] pipeline [Music] you

Channel: Spark

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Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, Science documentary, space, telescopes, Building the biggest, Pipeline, gas pipeline, Britpipe, langeled pipeline, ExxonMobil, Statoil, Norway, England, gas pipeline construction, gas pipeline technician, gas pipeline installation, engineering explained, engineering documentary, engineering marvels

Id: XEFMgap6Ptg

Length: 44min 30sec (2670 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021