As well as accommodation for 216 personnel, the facility contains the utilities required to operate the world’s first nearshore LNG terminal, including a power station, water treatment plant and the terminal control station. The modern, high-quality accommodation is designed to allow workforce to live and work comfortably together offshore. The platform is 95 meters long, 70 meters wide and weighs more than 10,000 tons.
Having completed its 11,885 nautical mile journey from northeast China, where it was constructed, the QU will now be installed and commissioned in just a few days, thanks to an innovative design feature: unlike a conventional jacket and topsides concept - which would take several months to install, hook up and commission - it will lift itself out of the water using its four giant hydraulic legs.
The QU will be the nerve centre of the GTA hub terminal, located 10km offshore on the maritime border of Mauritania and Senegal. Alongside the QU, the hub terminal will host a floating liquified natural gas (FLNG) vessel, currently under construction in Singapore, which will cool and liquify the gas. The terminal will also provide for safe offtake of the liquified gas to LNG carriers.
The hub terminal will be protected by a 1.2km-long breakwater, composed of 21 giant concrete caissons sat on a soil-stabilising foundation built from two million tons of rock sourced in Mauritania. The final caisson was installed in May 2022, completing the breakwater.
The QU was constructed at the CIMC Raffles Shipyard in Yantai, China, and the facility is being transported and installed by a consortium of Eiffage and Saipem.The GTA Project is being developed by bp alongside its partners Kosmos Energy, Petrosen and SMH.
Please contact Aissatou Diagne – Communication Advisor, bp Senegal - aissatou.diagne@bp.com ou +221770999242