Heavy lifting giant Sarens has outlined its role in the dismantling of the South Angsi Alpha offshore platform in Malaysia.
The dismantled platform, weighing around 4,000 tons, is the largest ever dismantled and reused in Malaysia, with part of its structure already located on the seabed, where it will serve as a support for the creation of artificial reefs.
Sarens, working on behalf of Marine Masters, used 16 units of 450/650 ton strand jack combinations to lower the Mobile Offshore Application Barge (MOAB) onto the barge on which the topside was loaded, in what is now the first task of this type carried out by the group’s Asia Pacific (APAC) team.
This was the first time Sarens APAC had worked on a decommissioning task using a strand jack solution, the company noted in a statement, so a significant amount of preliminary study was required to meet all the necessary requirements to meet the safety standards of the process, while ensuring that no downtime occurred.
Located in Block PM 305, approximately130 km from Terengganu, off the coast of West Malaysia, the South Angsi Alpha platform was in service from August 2005 until its closure in September 2019.
The floating storage and offloading vessel was decommissioned almost a year later, in March 2020, while the two-phase wells plugging and abandonment campaign was completed in August 2022.
“Once the main platform had been lowered, the topside, the 13 conductors and their four support legs were separated,” the Sarens statement noted.
“The topside was transported to the coast at the Labuan Shipyard, where the loose elements were unloaded.”
The platform's substructure was then sunk to the seabed, at a depth of approximately 70 metres, where it will now serve as a structure for the creation of artificial reefs.
