4 Legged Jacket & Piles
The contract work scope for the Saltire A Jacket included the building of a 4 Leg Jacket weighing 15,500 Tonnes and 16 Piles weighing 5,300 Tonnes. During the contract period, client ownership of the project changed hands when in May 1991 Elf Enterprise Caledonia acquired the assets of Occidental in the North Sea, including Saltire, Piper and other facilities.
Fabrication of the Jacket started on 1st October 1990. Assembly of the structure commenced some months later on the secondary west slipway as the Piper B Jacket was being completed and loaded out from the east slipway.
With reference to the images of loadout pulling system, the equipment was developed by John Gibson (Lifting Gear) and first used for loadout of Piper B jacket. For the Saltire operation onsite improvements were made to the jacking system resulting in a speed increase from 11 metres/hour to 21 metres/hour, thus reducing the loadout time from 19 hours to 12 hours.
The Jacket and Piles were completed three weeks ahead of schedule on 15th June 1992 and following sail away from the Yard the Jacket was installed later that year. As part of the Piper Area Redevelopment, the Saltire platform commenced production in May 1993, with processed oil being exported to the Piper B platform.
The platform was in operation until 2014 when production was suspended and then ultimately ceased altogether in 2016.