ONA Marine recently completed a full subsea mooring integrity and inspection scope for the Port of Nauru, Phosphate loading facility. The detailed technical scope was commissioned by sponsors and was undertaken for a large consulting firm in Brisbane.
Nauru is a tiny phosphate rock island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean south of the Marshall Islands in Oceania. It is only 53 kilometres (33 mi) south of the Equator at coordinates 0°32′S 166°55′E. Nauru is one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean—the others are Banaba (Ocean Island) in Kiribati and Makatea in French Polynesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Nauru
The mooring system on the South Western side is in the open sea with no protection to the wind or waves from the West. The location is synonymous with vessels continually rolling and heaving while under the cantilever making it extremely dangerous for the ship’s crew to open and close hatches with pontoons and roller hatches.
Initially developed to enable the loading of phosphate vessels about 90 years ago, the mooring system at AIWO comprises a complex system of deep-sea anchors (in about 540m water depth), chains, connecting plates, shackles and ten mooring buoys.
The provided scope was designed to re-establish the mooring baseline and address mooring issues at the site after decades of relatively new mooring equipment failures and significant losses in berthing availability. ONA Marine were awarded the scope based on our established excellence in this field working with entities to implement best mooring asset practices and enhance asset availability.
This article is written by Mike Priestly, Principal Engineer (Mech) and Chartered Naval Architect of ONA Marine (ONA). At ONA Marine we provide quality mooring equipment, technical and operational moored asset services to the energy, defence and maritime industries, collaborating with world class suppliers of marine equipment and technology to support our customer’s needs. ONA marine is based in Fremantle with a depot in Brisbane. We work in collaboration with port engineers, mariners and suppliers to expedite the application of skills and processes from design to implementation. We work collaboratively with our customers supporting their vessels, mooring systems, marine facilities, docks, ports, marine terminals and offshore facilities.