Gorgon Project

The Gorgon project is one of the world's largest natural gas projects and the largest single resource natural gas project in Australia's history.

The Gorgon project will develop the Greater Gorgon area gas fields, located approximately 130 kilometres off the northwest coast of Western Australia. The project is operated by Chevron and is a joint venture of the Australian subsidiaries of Chevron (approximately 47%), ExxonMobil (25%), Shell (25%), Osaka Gas (1.25%), Tokyo Gas (1%) and Chubu Electric Power (0.417%).

The complexity and sheer scale of Gorgon is unprecedented. The project includes:

• A gas-processing facility on Barrow Island consisting of three 5-million-tons-per-annum (Mtpa) liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains and carbon-dioxide injection facilities, and a domestic gas phase of up to 300 terajoules-per-day (TJ/d)
• Subsea development of the Gorgon and Jansz gas fields involving up to 30 subsea pipelines from the fields to Barrow Island
• LNG shipping facilities to transport products to international markets. Approximately three LNG shipments are expected to leave a dedicated LNG loading jetty each week.

Barrow Island is an internationally significant nature reserve and the site of Australia's largest onshore operating oil field for the past 45 years. The environmental conditions relating to the project limits the entire site to 300 hectares of uncleared land, representing approximately 1.3 percent of the island’s land mass.

Scope of Services
The LNG downstream and logistics portion (AU$27 billion) of the AU$43 billion project is being undertaken by the Kellogg Joint Venture Gorgon (KJVG), comprised of KBR, Hatch, JGC and Clough.

Hatch has been involved in the project since 2004 and has undertaken both pre-FEED and FEED studies. In 2010, the KJVG was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contract for the execution phase of the project.

Hatch has made a significant contribution to the project, from pre-FEED, FEED phases to execution, in
the following areas:

• Project planning and execution
  • Project execution strategy
  • Project management
  • Construction management
  • Modularization and construction sequencing
  • Environmental compliance and monitoring
  • Interface management
  • Safety and quality management

• Balance of plant infrastructure engineering
  • Plant layout and optimization
  • Marine and jetty
  • Utilities and water treatment
  • Early works and civil/structural
  • Pioneering facilities
  • Temporary and permanent buildings

• Procurement, supply and logistics
  • Planning and execution
  • Fabrication yard quality assurance
  • Transportation and freight
  • Materials handling
  • Quarantine management
  • Supply base and warehousing
  • Waste management
  • Contract administration

Project Highlights
A project of this size and complexity has many challenges. For the Gorgon project, developing an execution and construction strategy that addresses the geographical and logistical aspects was made even more challenging by the environmental restrictions and conditions placed on the project.

The result is a world-class example of environmental management and construction planning. It also shows that conservation and development can successfully co-exist.

Key challenges and highlights of the project to-date include:

• A world-class modular-construction strategy was developed to minimize impact on the island during the
  construction phase. The project utilizes several fabrication yards across South East Asia and Australia to support the planned 250,000 tons of LNG modules, the largest being over 6000 tons. Hatch was instrumental in developing the modularization strategy for the project, and is currently providing quality management of the modularization yard activities along with associated logistical and transportation planning
• The project restrictions on Barrow Island require significant procurement, supply and logistics challenges to manage
• Leading environmental and quarantine procedures are in place to protect the indigenous flora and fauna. Hatch developed a comprehensive quarantine management plan for the project to manage all quarantine aspects and inspections across the entire supply chain
• The project required a global team to deliver such a large undertaking. During the study phases, project planning, engineering and procurement was undertaken across five countries using resources based in Perth, London, Houston, Singapore, and Jakarta. As the project has progressed into execution, supply and fabrication is being undertaken on five continents including major modular construction yards in China, Korea and Indonesia.