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Mooring the largest floating facility ever built | Shell's Prelude - YouTube
Channel: Shell
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Two hundred kilometres off the coast
of northwestern Australia,
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a rigging crew
is about to start the day.
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We are up to mooring leg number eight.
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Don't become complacent.
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We're halfway through it,
we'll get the next eight done safely.
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But this is no ordinary day at the office,
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because they are about to moor
the largest floating facility ever built.
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Look, it is absolutely fantastic.
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I've had about four or five years,
I've been thinking about the mooring system,
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so to now actually be here,
pulling these things in, fantastic!
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I am absolutely stoked, honestly.
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At 660,000 tonnes when fully loaded,
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Prelude weighs six times more
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than the largest aircraft carriers
in the world,
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and it will operate in an area known
for extreme weather conditions.
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The need for this mooring system to work
is critical.
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We could hit the cyclones and
this mooring system will hold us in place.
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To do that, the project team has created
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one of the strongest mooring systems
ever built.
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Deep inside Prelude is the turret
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that allows the facility to rotate,
or weathervane.
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Beneath Prelude,
one of the largest chains in the world,
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nearly 25,000 links
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attached to mooring piles
drilled deep into the ocean floor.
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Now the team is preparing
to connect chain number eight,
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making Prelude officially storm-safe.
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What's incredible about this is
they'll be pulling in one or two links
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that they've already predetermined
during the pre-lay,
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which is quite an incredible feat
of engineering and installation.
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The operation to moor Prelude begins
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with the rigging team making the steep
descent into the bowels of the turret.
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Outside, three tugs
are holding Prelude in position.
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The crew on the Deep Orient
has retrieved the mooring line.
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On Prelude, a giant winch
is standing by to haul in the chain,
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and the engineers are ready
to monitor each and every move.
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Everything is in place.
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All positioned, ready to go, so it's now
up to the team onboard to finish the job.
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- Yellow winch pay in, easy.
- Yes, pay in five metres.
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This is the main event,
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we are pulling in the chains one by one
and connecting them off.
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This is the culmination
of years of planning
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to bring this to a head
- awesome, absolutely awesome.
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Remezel winch, copy.
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What loads have we got on the winch
at the moment?
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Slowly but surely,
the winch hauls in the chain.
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Winch, good to go another four metres.
Pay in four metres.
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Yeah mate, coming up.
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And it begins to emerge...
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You can probably see the yellow socket,
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just over the side here.
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That bang you just heard, are as the chain
comes through the chain connector,
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the engineers are looking
for a particular link
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and that's when they know they've pulled
the chain into the right length,
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and that is what then holds us in place
to the seabed.
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A final turn of the winch...
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...and the last link locks into place.
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Dive control, turret.
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Copy.
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Confirm, please, that the golden links
are sitting nicely.
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- Yep, that's correct.
- Yeah, understood.
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We're clear to release the load.
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All stop on the main winch.
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That's all stopped, mate, all stopped.
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And with the eighth mooring line
connected,
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Prelude is storm-safe.
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- Landed.
- Making history.
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So this is one of the 16 mooring lines
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that will secure the Prelude facility
to the seabed
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for the next 25 years.
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This is number eight,
so we're not going anywhere.
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This is fantastic!
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Great job, thank you very much.
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