Abstract
The BP Kewdale White Oil Line transports fuel from BP’s Kwinana operations to the Kewdale terminal of Perth Airport using 12-inch (DN300) pipelines. Due to the construction of the Thornlie Cockburn Link railway project, 12.94 kilometres of the fuel line needed to be relocated. Due to the extremely restricted workspace (less than 5m width), Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) techniques were implemented for construction. Approx. 12km of the pipeline was constructed by HDD across 12no. Crossings, of which seven were more than 1,000m in length and up to 1,450m. Each of these crossings was complex in nature, affected by adjacent railway activities, magnetic interference, limited footprints, and difficult geology. It is the largest HDD component completed in a single pipeline in Australia. The paper will focus on the operational challenges that the team faced, the elements that were successful and many others that were not a success but were overcome through collaboration and planning. This included successfully recovering a stuck drill string more than 1,200m in length.
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