India's Skin Effect Heated Pipeline Will Keep Oil Flowing

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--India's first heated pipelines will be built by Larsen & Toubro (Chennai, India) for Cairn India. The engineering, procurement and construction contract will cover the laying of an insulated crude oil pipeline and a gas pipeline from Barmer in Rajasthan to Salaya in Gujurat. Cairn is working on the Northern Area Development (NAD) oil project with its joint venture partner, state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, in the Barmer area.

A 24-inch insulated skin effect heat traced pipeline with polyurethane foam insulation for crude oil transportation will be laid from Barmer to the oil export terminal at Jamnagar. From the Mangala Field at Barmer, the pipeline will stretch 330 kilometers southward to a pump station and oil take-off point at Viramgam and then continue 261 kilometers southwest to the export terminal at Salaya.

An 8-inch natural gas pipeline will be laid alongside the oil pipeline to transport gas from the Raageshwari fields to Salaya. This will feed 32 gas generators along the route for which the primary purpose is to produce electricity for a skin effect heat management system' to maintain the fluidity of the waxy crude.

The oil pipeline will be completed in the second half of 2009 in time to handle oil output from Cairn's 3.6 billion-barrel resource where work is in progress for a targeted production of 150,000 barrels per day.

In January 2008, L&T was awarded two contracts by Cairn and ONGC for the construction of civil works and consolidated construction works for the NAD project. The scope of these $350 million contracts covers the development of infrastructure facilities, the construction of 18 well pad structures, detailed engineering and construction of all civil and electromechanical works at the oil and gas fields. It also covers off-site infrastructure, supply, installation and commissioning of a 33-kilovolt-ampere high-voltage power line system and the telecom network.

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