Shell achieves engineering feat in Subic

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT - Thousands of residents here watched as three tugboats towed a gigantic concrete structure out of Subic Bay last Sunday afternoon en route to its final destination 50 kilometers offshore in northwestern Palawan.

The so-called "concrete gravity structure (CGS)," which weighs 85,000 tons and built by Shell Phils. Exploration B. V. (SPEX) at a cost of $150 million, is expected to reach the waters of Palawan by late Friday morning at the earliest.

Described as an "engineering feat," the CGS was successfully towed out of its casting basin in Redondo Peninsula where the structure was constructed by more than 1,300 workers starting in late-1998.

According to SPEX and its contractors, the Malampaya CGS Alliance led by Halliburton International, the structure, once it reaches the Malampaya natural gas field, will be "ballasted and sunk onto a pre-prepared seabed" more than 3,000 meters below sea level.

The CGS is just one of the components of the government's flagship $4.5-billion Malampaya deep water gas to power project. It will be used as base of a production platform that will extract an estimated 2.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to fuel 2,700 megawatts of power for Luzon for 20 years starting October 2001.

The CGS measures 63 meters high, equivalent to an 18-story building. It was designed to hold 500 million standard cubic feet of gas.

The government, which owns the natural gas resource, stands to generate revenues of about $10 billion in 20 years.

Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chairman Felicito Payumo said this is the first time that Subic hosted "a record-breaking project" such as the CGS.

"SPEX and its contractors should be congratulated for a job well done which is sure to benefit the country because they were right on target on their budget and were three months ahead of schedule. They also spent four million accident-free working hours with the help of world-class Filipino workers," he said.

"That alone made it an exceptional project that's why they said Subic was already on the map of the gas and oil industry," he added.

Payumo also revealed that plans are under way for an alternative use of the area the CGS vacated in Sitio Agusuhin.

"The area can be used for constructing another CGS and it will be much easier this time because of the available infrastructure and highly capable manpower. But that's not the only possible use, there are others looking at it for possible ship repair yard and other completely different land uses such as a resort or marina," he said.