Nexen Buzzard Platform
Buzzard is located in the Outer Moray Firth, central North Sea, 100 kilometres northeast of Aberdeen and 55 kilometres from the nearest landfall at Peterhead. Buzzard straddles two licenses - P.986 (Blocks 19/10 and 20/6) and P.928(S) (Blocks 19/5a and 20/1S) and the water depth in the area is about 100 metres. The Buzzard field was discovered in 2001 and construction was completed in 2006, with production commencing early January 2007. EI.WHS were awarded the contract from Heerema Hartlepool Ltd to carry out the electrical & instrumentation installation on the Buzzard Utilities Module in December 2004. This part of the Buzzard development was an 11,000 tonne module, which carries all the electrical generation, control rooms and other services, which are required by the other decks to operate. The utilities module also includes the 120-man offshore accommodation module that was built by SLP Engineering and shipped to Heerema Hartlepool for installation and hook up by EI.WHS. The project for EI.WHS was initially a 9-month, but was extended to a 15-month contract to allow for additional design changes and modifications by Nexen, which saw the expenditure of 245,000 man-hours, a peak labour force of 230 men, and the installation of some 285,000 metres of cable in this time. The module was 100% completed on time for the sail away date. Contract value to EI.WHS was £8.6m. Charlie Fischer, Nexen’s president and CEO added, “Completing Buzzard on time and on budget, in just three years from approval of the development by the U.K. government, is a major accomplishment. Our co-venturers, hundreds of suppliers and contractors, and thousands of people have worked on the project and I’d like to thank each of them for their commitment and hard work.”
