 ENKA and its joint venture partner Bechtel were awarded several contracts since 1998 for the development of the Kashagan Oil Field in Kazakhstan, the largest oil field discovered in the country within the last 30 years.
The initial construction contracts signed by ENKA and Bechtel for the development were the Bautino Supply Base EPC in 1998, the miscellaneous civil and quarry works between 1999 and 2001 and the offshore civil works contracts include to build berms and islands between 2001 and 2004.
Additionally, in 2005, ENKA signed another contract with Agip KCO (the operator of giant Kashagan Oil Field) again to build additional berms, larger islands and other offshore structures required for the Kashagan Oil Field development. Within the works included in this contract, the fill materials are quarried and hauled 180 nautical miles to Kashagan Oil Field from Bautino village, where the job-site base is located and the amount of filled material hauled with a fleet of 46 various vessels has amounted to more than 2 million tonnes through the first two years of the contract, as done in smaller scale between 2001 and 2004.
Apart from reducing the construction season to 7.5 months a year, the severe winter climatic conditions of the Northern Caspian Sea necessitate the protection of the constructed offshore structures against surging ice by building rigid ice barriers. Special techniques needed for the construction of the offshore structures include the use of GPS equipment mounted on excavators which, with custom made software, perform profiling and grading works underwater. These are conducted with an extremely high degree of accuracy for the underwater berms required for the drilling rig. |