Case Study — Originally published 3 December 2013
This article revisits ICON’s wellhead platform installation work for TOPIC S.A. in Tunisia’s Gulf of Hammamet, and has been updated for clarity ahead of republishing.
TOPIC S.A. of Tunisia engaged ICON Engineering for a wellhead platform installation on the Halk el Menzel (HelM) field, located in the Gulf of Hammamet. The project called on ICON’s transportation and installation analysis, topsides structural design, and operational procedure development for the jacket lift, upending, piling, and topside installation.
A Wellhead Platform Installation With an Unusual Constraint
A particularly challenging aspect of this project was that the jacket earmarked for installation had not originally been designed to be lifted by a jack-up rig. Normally, a jacket’s structural design accounts for the specific lift capabilities of the jack-up rig that will install it from the outset — crane reach, load path, and rigging points are all worked out together with the installation method.
On this project, that upfront coordination hadn’t happened, so ICON had to work backwards: engineering a lift, upending, and installation sequence around a jacket design that was already fixed, rather than the more straightforward path of designing the jacket and the lift method together.
ICON’s Platform Installation Track Record
To close that gap safely, ICON drew on its experience across more than 25 platform installations at the time, engineering the lift, upending, and installation sequence to work within the constraints of the existing jacket design rather than around a purpose-built one.
For operators, this kind of situation — a jacket built without upfront consideration of the rig that will lift it — isn’t unique to Tunisia. Field development timelines, contractor changes, or an initial design based on a different installation vessel can all leave a jacket needing this kind of adapted lift engineering later in the project. ICON’s approach on the HelM project — treating the existing jacket design as fixed and engineering the lift, upending, and installation sequence around it — reflects the same wellhead platform installation capability the company applies across its broader portfolio of self-installing, minimal facilities, and rig-installed platform work.
This kind of retrofit-style wellhead platform installation work sits within ICON’s broader Rig Installed Platforms capability, which covers the full scope of getting a platform jacket from design through to safe installation on a jack-up rig — including projects, like this one, where the jacket wasn’t originally built with that installation method in mind. For a technical definition of the rig type involved, see the IADC Lexicon’s entry on self-elevating (jack-up) units.
