Shell’s massive Olympus tension leg platform (TLP) sets sail from Ingleside, Texas for a 425 mile trek to its final home on the Mars Field in the Gulf of Mexico.
For 10 days, tugboats will pull the over 120,000 ton platform to location where work will begin to secure the platform in place. The Olympus TLP will be moored to the seafloor by tendons grouped at each of the structure's corners and will float in approximately 3000 feet of water.
The Olympus TLP is Shell’s sixth and largest tension leg platform and will provide process infrastructure for two of Shell’s deep water discoveries, West Boreas and South Deimos. The project also includes pipelines that will be routed through West Delta 143C, the recently installed shallow water platform.
The Olympus TLP is expected to start production in 2014, producing at a rate of 100k boe.