Saipem won the award for the construction of The Narrows Marine Crossing, Queensland, one of the world’s longest trenchless marine pipelines.
The project, constructed by Theiss for Saipem and Santos GLNG, was awarded the honour for the detailed design, procurement and construction that was involved.
The 4.3 km long pipeline will transport the extracted and compressed coal seam gas from gas fields between the town of Roma, Queensland and the Arcadia Valley to the Curtis Island LNG processing facility off Gladstone.
The last section of the GLNG pipeline runs across the vast tidal plain known as The Narrows.
In order to minimise the environmental impact of pipeline construction activities, Saipem built a 4 m wide undersea tunnel enabling the pipeline to cross The Narrows without disturbing the local marine habitat, wildlife and surrounding coastal environment.
The most innovative aspect of this project, which had never been seen before within the oil and gas industry, was the utilisation of a pipe thruster machine to launch the pipeline into a tunnel.
The excavation of the tunnel was performed using a tunnel boring machine with an internal diameter of 3.4 m, lining the tunnel with pre-cast concrete segments.
Saipem received the award for the Narrows Marine Crossing project alongside Santos GLNG and Thiess.