(dramatic music)
It was coined very early on that we're on that
we're the amazing Appomattox
and I do truly believe that this is an amazing Appomattox.
16 stories high, two football fields wide,
and weighing more than an aircraft carrier,
this extraordinary looking construction
will soon become one of the world's largest
oil platforms the amazing Appomattox.
(welder crackling)
This is the story of how it was designed and built.
Geoje, South Korea.
Thousands of workers pour into one of the world's
largest shipyards, many of them to work on the Appomattox.
It's taken nearly four years of design to get to this point,
involving hundreds of engineers who faced
a monumental challenge, to create a state-of-the-art,
greener, longer-lasting oil platform
that's bigger than any other Shell has ever built.
There's been a lot of design challenges.
There's been a lot of installation challenges.
We had so many challenges
that we had never even thought about before.
Over the past two years,
large modules were constructed on the quayside,
then lifted by gigantic cranes
and stacked on top of each other
with inch-perfect precision.
It's a bit like making a giant 3D puzzle.
The platform's designers also had their own puzzle to solve;
how to make Appomattox last for 40 years.
That's double the lifespan of most other platforms.
Over the course of that time,
it's gonna see some of the worst weather conditions
on the planet, so we have to build it with
the utmost quality because there's a lot of lives
who'll be on there seven days a week,
24 hours a day, that depend on it.
The oil platform will be located 80-miles
from the Louisiana coast, in water a mile and a half deep.
7,000-foot of water, now that's what,
a lot of them, I'm very amazed by.
It just floats on the water.
When you think about it, it's pretty amazing
that something that big actually floats, but it does.
The oil reservoir is another
14,000 feet below the seabed.
When Appomattox is up and running,
crude oil from subsea wells will be processed,
cleaned, and separated into oil and different gases.
It's a process that requires a lot of energy.
The power plant on Appomattox is 150 megawatts
and that's five times larger than our next largest facility,
and it's enough to power about 100,000 homes.
Most oil platforms are powered
by diesel generators, but in a drive
to be more environmentally friendly,
Appomattox is fully electric, reducing emissions by 25%.
To achieve this, they took a leaf out of the book
of the electric car manufacturer, Tesla.
Electrifying a car allows you to completely
optimize that car around that electrification.
That is basically what we've done with Appomattox.
We've made it your Tesla car with one centralized
electricity system as low in terms of emission impact
on the environment as possible.
The team designed an ultra-efficient method
of generating electricity,
using natural gas and steam turbines,
but it's a process that generates a lot of heat
that would require a huge amount of water for cooling.
We realized that we needed 2.5 million barrels
of sea water a day,
so it's about the amount of water you would need
for Houston's potable water supply every day.
We started to question, well,
what is the environmental impact
of that type of consumption.
(baby coos)
The wells in between.
The team faced a double challenge,
to use less water and ensure marine life is unaffected.
Specialist marine researchers were drafted in to help.
(water splashing)
They discovered that at a depth of 2,000,
the water in this part of the Gulf of Mexico
was so much colder,
they could cut their consumption in half.
(dramatic music)
And so, we made a project decision
to source water from 2,000 feet deep.
The sea life they found at this depth
was mostly very small fish
and crustaceans, including one called Phronima.
It's believed to be the inspiration
for the 1986 movie, "Aliens".
It was a creature that lived inside
of another creature for protection.
He's got a little mouth that comes and sticks out
and he's just a terrifying little creature.
Researchers discovered that Phronima swims
at a 1/2 per second, which gave them an idea.
To use multiple water intake pipes pulling water
from 2000-feet slowly enough to allow Phronima
and friends to stay out of harms' way.
So if you had asked us early on,
we would never have told you that a critical factor
in the design would have been
the speed at which small fish swim.
But with one challenge resolved,
another one was looming.
Engineers needed a pipe insulation
that could last four decades
and withstand big temperature fluctuations
7,000 feet under the sea.
The insulation system
probably posed the greatest challenge.
We really didn't have a solution when we started.
For help, the team turned to a group
of Cal Tech scientists, testing a chemical catalyst
used in a very different field.
(machinery whirring)
It's the kinda solution only chemists could come up with.
So they have a catalyst that they use for hepatitis vaccines
and they mix that with a chemical
that we use to make synthetic oil.
That turns into insulation that we can put on pipe
and then, put in 7,000-feet of water.
(water splashing)
The catalyst created insulation
that was long lasting, extremely strong, and pliable.
Qualities that have made it a contender
for a completely different application,
(gun bangs)
bullet proof vests.
(low thudding)
(tense music)
And it wasn't just the pipe insulation
that had to last for 40 years.
Another major challenge was the limited lifespan
of tanks needed to store corrosive chemicals.
And chemical storage tanks often pose a challenge
just due to the nature of the chemicals.
You're never sure exactly how it's gonna react
with the steel structure.
Engineers calculated that even if they lined
or reinforced the tanks,
they still might not last long enough.
The solution?
To design tanks to be fully extractable.
If longterm exposure to corrosive chemicals damages them,
they can simply be plucked out of the hull,
sent back to shore, and replaced.
Some of these items are actually
completely serial number one.
They're brand new, not only to Shell, but to the world.
With all the design challenges overcome.
Cause for a celebration. Good deal.
You bet. (man laughs)
Appomattox is now off the drawing board
and into construction.
In South Texas, four modules that form
the top of the platform are being made.
One provides power, another processes oil
and gas, a third is for utilities like drinking water
and sewage processing,
and the fourth is the living quarters.
Each weighs about 10,000 tons
and will be lifted onto the hull.
That lift is the culmination of three years
of hard work and execution.
And once it's set down on the hull,
it's not coming back up until
the platform's decommissioned 40 years later.
And now it's time to get to work
on those modules and deck lifts.
(machinery rattling)
I particularly like all the big lifts
and so, every time we make
a 1,500-ton deck lift, lift it up,
and set it on 15 points without
causing a clash, that's huge.
That's really huge.
It's really exciting to pull that off.
(upbeat music)
Enormous shipyard cranes pick up the modules,
lift them 60 feet into the air,
and delicately place them on the hull.
(machinery whirring)
We did that three times
and each one was just as impressive as the last.
That's why I do this.
For six months,
construction goes nonstop from sunrise to sunset.
Appomattox is transformed from a hull into an oil platform.
It's now 29 stories tall, two football fields wide,
and will house 180 personnel all year-round.
I'm proud of it
and I'm proud to be a part of the team
that helped push this through.
(man laughing)
It was really amazing to be able to see something
from design through fabrication
and now installation and construction.
We're truly driving technology and innovation forward.
The experience was incredible.
For us to be part of such an incredible project
and to have the success we actually were able to provide,
it will be something we will never forget.
In the next episode
of the mighty Appomattox story,
see how it tried to outrun a super typhoon on its journey
across the world from South Korea to the Gulf of Mexico.
(upbeat music)
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to see more on the amazing Appomattox oil platform
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