Video Source: Yossi Abu, Delek Drilling CEO.
Heerema launched Noble Energy’s Leviathan jacket offshore Israel. Thialf (seen in the background), the contractor’s largest deepwater construction vessel, will position and secure the jacket to the seabed. The topsides will be installed by Heerema’s new semisubmersible vessel Sleipnir in her first-ever project later this year, making a 15,000-metric-tonne lift using both 10,000-metric-tonne cranes.
The jacket, constructed in Texas over 18 months, completed the journey on a 180-m-long barge across the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean site in 28 days, arriving in late January.
About 100 m high and weighing 15,500 tons, it is being placed 10 km offshore Israel. The Leviathan Field is located in the I/14 Leviathan North and I/14 Leviathan South leases, approximately 125 km west of Haifa, Israel, and 35 km west of the Tamar field in the eastern Mediterranean Levantine Basin. Water depth ranges from 1600 to 1750 m.
First gas production is expected by the end of the year, and Israel has export deals signed with Jordan and Egypt, and aims to build a pipeline with Greece and Cyprus to carry the gas to Europe.