Sarens details scope at Canada’s REEF

Heavy-lift specialist Sarens has detailed its scope at Ridley Island Energy Export Facility (REEF) near Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada.

Offering transport, jacking and marine logistics support for the LPG export facility, Sarens has been working alongside its client, Altagas. So far, Sarens has offloaded and installed several components, including three 2,532-tonne LPG accumulators, two 700-tonne LPG bullets and 122 pipe rack modules.

Sarens highlighted the challenges of the facility’s location, which is just south of Alaska. This brings extreme weather conditions, such as swells and waves often exceeding 10 m, average winter temperatures of around 3-4 degrees, along with constant wet conditions.

Despite this, Sarens transported all equipment and modular pipe racks under the hook, jacked down the accumulators and bullets onto their foundations and supported other heavy transport at REEF. To do so, the firm used 96 axle lines of SPMTs and a CS 250 crane.

Project specifics

Sarens transported each accumulator – measuring 27.5 m wide and 36 m tall – over 3 km from the jetty to the final foundation, before jacking each down with a CS 250 and 16 jacks, lowering them 2.5 m onto a sunken foundation.

The company also installed two jetty module spans of a 13-span section pipeline, which is being built to connect super-tankers to the plant. With one weighing 400 tonnes and measuring 71 m long and the other weighing 358 tonnes and measuring 66 m long, for the latter, Sarens was without a ship or shore crane, so devised a solution using 2 x 11 lines of SPMTs placed onto the barge with a frame that could receive the span from the heavy-lift vessel moored in deeper waters.

With the barge positioned between the two foundations, Sarens’ team used a combination of the tide and SPMTs to install the span onto its foundation. The first span, conversely, was lifted straight from the vessel onto a double-15 SPMT configuration and moved 3 km for crane pick-up and installation.

The LPG bullets, each weighing 700 tonnes and measuring 62.5 m x 8.7 m, were secured to a 4.5-m-high grillage to prevent them from coming into contact with the quayside during the tide cycle, before Sarens placed 2.9 m of packing beneath three temporary saddles. As the bullets were offloaded from the vessel, they were then jacked down, transported over 2 km through a working container yard, and installed onto foundations.

Looking ahead, Sarens is set to receive a final heavy-lift vessel along with two accumulators and 11 modules over the next year. Moreover, groundwork has already begun on a facility expansion, which will see another bullet and approximately 25 modules added this summer – plus another accumulator in 2027.