High-Value Engineering Center: Implementing a Major Capital Project - Gorgon
Authors: Denney Dennis 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 145708, ’Use of a High- Value Engineering Center in Execution of a Major Capital Project, Gorgon,’ by Siva Malladi, SPE, Parag Shah, and David Cruikshank, Chevron, prepared for the 2011 SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, Jakarta, 20-22 September. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

The Chevron-operated Gorgon Project is off the northwest coast of Western Australia and encompasses several megaprojects, including an all-subsea upstream development of the Greater Gorgon gas fields. Because of its sheer size, scale, and complexity, in addition to several unique characteristics, the Gorgon Project required an extraordinary level of project management. A key project-management strategy was appointment of a high-value engineering center (HVEC) in Jakarta.   

Introduction

This project is one of the world’s largest natural-gas projects and the largest single-resource project in Australia’s history. The development program includes several megaproject components.

Gorgon Upstream—comprising subsea production facilities, pipeline facilities, and domestic gas-export facilities.

Gorgon Downstream—comprising a 15×106 t/a liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) plant on Barrow Island, gas-receiving and processing facilities (e.g., slug catchers, heaters/coolers, acid-gas-removal plants, gas-dehydration plants for pretreatment of feed gas to the LNG plant), condensate-stabilization facilities, monoethylene glycol regeneration, LNG/condensate storage and offloading, power-generation and -distribution facilities, and other utilities to support the LNG plant.

A domestic gas plant with the capacity to provide 300 TJ/d to supply gas to Western Australia.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection.

LNG-export terminal.

Infrastructure facilities—camp, buildings, logistics, telecommunications, and other facilities to support the construction and operation of the LNG-plant facilities on Barrow Island.

The full-length paper details the scope associated with the HVEC work for the Gorgon-Downstream project, the evaluation undertaken of the Jakarta HVEC, and the challenges encountered and remedial tac-tics used during the execution of the HVEC work.

The engineering and procurement portions of the downstream project were completed at the main execution centers (ECs) in London (two offices), Singapore (one office), and Jakarta (one office). Part of the execution strategy was the use of an HVEC in Jakarta to support the main ECs in the UK, operating as a remote design  resource. The project-execution plan for performing this work was the following.

The main EC would perform the detailed engineering, begin the 3D-modeling work, bring the model up to between 40 and 60% maturity for various disciplines, and transfer the design-work scope to the HVEC. The workscope transition would occur in a staggered sequence for various work areas—modules, preassembled racks (PARs), preassembled units (PAUs), and stick-built areas—in accordance with the EC execution sequence and in line with the overall project schedule.

The HVEC would pick up the 3D model from that point and develop it to final completion to generate the required deliverables, as described in the following section.