Aberdeen, 52-56 Shiprow, Trinity Congregational Church

Murchison Oil Platform Model, Maritime Museum, Aberdeen

This outstanding 25 ft high scale model at the Maritime Museum, Aberdeen, is of the fixed oil production platform, named after the eminent Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, situated at 618 230 4900 N–018 440 2600 E. This is about 120 miles north-east of the Shetland Islands in one of the United Kingdom’s most northerly oilfields. The platform was built for Conoco (UK) Ltd and produced oil for the first time in 1980. It is still in production and currently operated by CNR International (UK) Ltd.

The platform is typical of many constructed when the oil industry expanded into deep-water exploration in the 1970s and early 1980s. It consists of a jacket, the steel structure below water level, and the topsides accommodation above water level housing the equipment, control rooms and offices necessary to operate the platform and for staff

quarters and facilities.

The platform, of about 57 000 ton total weight, is supported by the lattice structure of the eight-legged jacket which is 544 ft high and has a footprint on the sea bed 245 ft square. The four corner legs of the jacket are anchored by 32 piles, eight per leg, each weighing about 263 tons. Besides supporting the applied vertical loading the jacket was designed to withstand the forces exerted by 100 ft high once-in-a-century waves generated by winds of 150 mph.

The jacket was fabricated at McDermott’s yard at Ardersier on the Moray Firth. It was constructed on its side and was towed on a barge to its designated site at the Murchison oil field where it was launched onto a

template prepared on the sea bed. Its weight at launch was about 25 000 tons. The platform, in operation since 1980, controls 27 wells drilled to reach oil bearing strata at a depth of 9900 ft below the sea bed. These wells gave the platform a maximum production capacity of 150 000

barrels of oil per day.

The topsides of this 1:33 scalemodelwasmade by Conoco and used to help design the platform. Its jacket down to the sea bed was built by Donald Smith Modelmakers in 1995. This impressive exhibit is complemented by other oil rig platform displays including one on the landmark Auk Alpha at 568 240 0200 N–028 030 4800 E erected from 1972–75 and designed by Shell Oil OCD, contractor Redpath Dorman Long (North Sea) Ltd & Wm. Press Ltd. Its steel jacket, which was launched from a land construction site, had eight legs anchored to the sea bed by 20 piles and was 361 ft high with 62 ft above water. There is also a display on the Piper B platform, located in 467 ft depth of water, which came on stream in 1983.

R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.

Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.

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