June 5, 2013 at 3:05 pm
INGLESIDE — Royal Dutch Shell is about to move a mountain, towing its new state-of-the-art Olympus platform for duty in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep water.
The Olympus, designed to operate in water depths of 3,000 to 5,000 feet, will be Shell’s sixth tension leg platform in the Gulf. The company escorted a group of journalists on a tour of the platform Wednesday.
The platform — towering 406 feet from the base of the hull to the top of the derrick — is docked at the Ingleside, Texas shipyard near Corpus Christi and will leave in about a month to work at the Mars B project 130 miles south of New Orleans. Earlier this year, the hull made an 18,000-mile, two-month trek from South Korea to Ingleside.
