Crude oil storage project completed

A crude oil tank farm equivalent in size to 24 football pitches, 17m high and with the capacity to store a total of 13.2 million barrels of oil has been constructed in Saldanha Bay, South Africa.

Located between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, the project provides quick access to markets in America, Europe and Asia. Over a three-year period, a total of 1.5 million m³ of earth was excavated and moved while 150,000m³ of concrete was used in construction operations.

The clients of WBHO Construction worked with Peri to develop the most appropriate solution. The most cost-effective method for constructing the underground tanks proved to be a project-specific solution using the Variokit steel composite carriage with additional specially designed structural steel members.

Realising the 110m x 110m tank storage facility slabs at heights of 17m was not economically feasible using standard methods.

Instead of a conventional slab formwork solution, the engineers designed a construction version borrowed from bridge building using formwork carriages. In the process, the table-like slab formwork was supported by the project-specific Variokit framework super-structure.

This construction method using formwork carriages allowed the slab formwork to be lowered just one day after concreting operations and moved 8m to the next section.

During the construction phase 3D models were said to have simplified on-site coordination and facilitated fast and reliable execution and control processes.