20 kilometers off the coast of oil is
one of the North Sea’s largest
underwater gasping it’s called more than
left at 40 kilometers long and 10
kilometers wide and containing over 300
billion cubic meters of gas it’s simply
massive but it’s locked in an icy to
3,000 meters below the surface so deep
and so remote that it’s considered
beyond the reef man and machine and that
is until the engineers at norske drop
the norwegian energy company decide it’s
just too tempting to ignore me because
there is enough gas to supply twenty
percent of Great Britain’s gas needs for
40 years it will take 10 years and cost
ten billion dollars first they’ll drill
the Ormen Lange gas deposit transport
the gas 120 kilometres to one of
Norway’s largest processing plants at
Nahanni then sent the processed gas to
the UK down the langlade pipeline a
staggering 1,200 kilometres the pipes
are each 12 metres long and weigh 10
tons with another 10 tons of concrete
and metal is added to give them enough
weight to stay on the ocean floor each
of the 100,000 pipes is numbered as it
comes out of the plan destined for a
specific location in the line the pipe
laying itself is a monstrous job once
the pipe is being manufactured it is
placed onto the supply ships for
delivery to the pipe laying barge the lb
200
the barges huge longer than two football
fields it’s an enormous floating steel
welding Factory which has to work with
military precision the pipeline is built
as a continuous tune it has dropped from
the ship to the seabed if the ship halts
were too long the strain on the pipe
could snap this is no ordinary welding
operation the process involves a special
welding machine with eight heads per
station
passing through each of the welding
stations in seven minutes the pipe is
then checked by an ultrasound machine if
applause detected it has to be repaired
immediately before moving to the next
station after all the welding stations
have linked the pipe the final step of
the operation is to seal the exposed
metal
it is covered in a protective heat
shrunk plastic without this the steel
pipe broke
for the most critical step of the
operation offloading the pipe to the
seafloor
as the pipe enters the ocean it begins
to sag and pressure is put on the entire
pipeline which is free hanging beneath
the ship without exactly the right
tension the pipe could snap like a
matchstick the pipe comes off the back
of the barge in what’s called a lazy s
configuration that s an unsupported pipe
has to be kept from just buckling under
its own weight so to keep it under
control you’ve got to keep that under a
huge tension to stop it from just
collapsing under its own weight as the
pipe is lowered the barge moves forward
24 metres not a meter more with this
well-oiled operation the lb 200 is able
to lay over 100 kilometers of pipeline a
month
one of the North Sea’s largest
underwater gasping it’s called more than
left at 40 kilometers long and 10
kilometers wide and containing over 300
billion cubic meters of gas it’s simply
massive but it’s locked in an icy to
3,000 meters below the surface so deep
and so remote that it’s considered
beyond the reef man and machine and that
is until the engineers at norske drop
the norwegian energy company decide it’s
just too tempting to ignore me because
there is enough gas to supply twenty
percent of Great Britain’s gas needs for
40 years it will take 10 years and cost
ten billion dollars first they’ll drill
the Ormen Lange gas deposit transport
the gas 120 kilometres to one of
Norway’s largest processing plants at
Nahanni then sent the processed gas to
the UK down the langlade pipeline a
staggering 1,200 kilometres the pipes
are each 12 metres long and weigh 10
tons with another 10 tons of concrete
and metal is added to give them enough
weight to stay on the ocean floor each
of the 100,000 pipes is numbered as it
comes out of the plan destined for a
specific location in the line the pipe
laying itself is a monstrous job once
the pipe is being manufactured it is
placed onto the supply ships for
delivery to the pipe laying barge the lb
200
the barges huge longer than two football
fields it’s an enormous floating steel
welding Factory which has to work with
military precision the pipeline is built
as a continuous tune it has dropped from
the ship to the seabed if the ship halts
were too long the strain on the pipe
could snap this is no ordinary welding
operation the process involves a special
welding machine with eight heads per
station
passing through each of the welding
stations in seven minutes the pipe is
then checked by an ultrasound machine if
applause detected it has to be repaired
immediately before moving to the next
station after all the welding stations
have linked the pipe the final step of
the operation is to seal the exposed
metal
it is covered in a protective heat
shrunk plastic without this the steel
pipe broke
for the most critical step of the
operation offloading the pipe to the
seafloor
as the pipe enters the ocean it begins
to sag and pressure is put on the entire
pipeline which is free hanging beneath
the ship without exactly the right
tension the pipe could snap like a
matchstick the pipe comes off the back
of the barge in what’s called a lazy s
configuration that s an unsupported pipe
has to be kept from just buckling under
its own weight so to keep it under
control you’ve got to keep that under a
huge tension to stop it from just
collapsing under its own weight as the
pipe is lowered the barge moves forward
24 metres not a meter more with this
well-oiled operation the lb 200 is able
to lay over 100 kilometers of pipeline a
month
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