Teamwork Key to Sable Success Says Calgary
Branch Speaker

The Sable Offshore Energy Project (SOEP) is a big enough challenge without complications. By late next year, the $2-billion first phase must be designed, built and installed 200 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia and ready to deliver natural gas to the Maritimes and New England states. Throw in dragged-out hearings that delayed final project approval until the end of 1997, and the question arises: How do you pull it off? Only through committed teamwork.

It's an integrated team approach, Lynn Zeidler, P.Eng., manager of the project's phase one implementation, told an APEGGA Calgary Branch luncheon meeting held March 12. It requires an open dialogue, a focus on team building and clear objectives. Everyone has to be working from the same page.ö

To meet fast-tracked deadlines, SOEP owners and contractors are conducting many simultaneous activities. These include providing detailed, yet flexible design, procurement, as well as fabrication in England of offshore platforms and installation of drilling jackets, the steel legs that support the platforms.

We have first-class contractors who are working very well together. Their alignment and the alignment among the owners is allowing the project to progress at the rate it is, said Ms. Zelda, a Shell Canada secondee.

SOEP is led by majority partners Mobil Oil Canada and Shell and project managers AGRA Monenco/ Brown and Root.

The consortium is also working closely with area governments and local communities and interest groups to ensure maximum jobs and economic benefits for Nova Scotia, while protecting the environment. Expected to be the largest construction project in Canada this year, SOEP will truly launch the province into the international energy business.

This offshore area contains the largest known undeveloped natural gas deposits in North America. The six Sable Island area fields being tapped by SOEP over the 25-year life of its two phases are estimated to contain 3.5 trillion cubic feet of recoverable sweet natural gas. When production commences in 2000, some 500 million cubic feet of gas and natural gas liquids per day will be shipped by 26-inch sub-sea pipeline to onshore processing plants and then onto Canadian and American markets.

For more information, check the Sable Offshore Energy Project website: www.soep.com