MANUFACTURER Emco Wheaton has delivered 39 engineered marine loading arms from its factory at Kirchhain in Germany to an oil refinery in the UAE.
39 giant loading arms shipped from Germany to Abu Dhabi refinery
MANUFACTURER Emco Wheaton has delivered 39 engineered marine loading arms from its factory at Kirchhain in Germany to an oil refinery on the Persian Gulf Coast in the UAE.
To project to took two years to complete because of its sheer scale, shipping components 4,000 kilometres. Each of the components was the same size as three trailer trucks end to end, weighing 1,500 tonnes in total.
The loading arms will be part of the US$10 billion expansion of the refinery undertaken by the Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (TAKREER).
The customer required 13 marine loading arms for each jetty ranging in diameter from eight to 16 inches, weighing 40 tonnes and measuring 26 metres in height. Emco's marine loading arms are designed to load and unload almost any liquid or compressed gas product from river barges, ships and ocean going super tankers.
Manufacturing the equipment required 60,000 man hours, and the loading arms will eventually be placed on three seaport jetties that are under construction at Ruwais by main contractor GS Engineering and Construction.
Following an initial shipment to Abu Dhabi last January the final loading arms were shipped in November 2012. "In terms of scale of what we were transporting from our production centre in Germany, this was a big shipment of 24 MLAs equivalent to around 920 tonnes of metal," said Brian Armitage, director of supply chain management in a company release.
In total, 39 MLAs were split into three shipments over a 12-month period along with 20 containers holding couplers, emergency release systems, electro-hydraulic controls and complete loading systems for the state-of-the-art jetty facility.
