The company is responsible for route preparation for the pipeline, route survey, dredging, elimination of free-spans and for the installation of rock protection along the 28in-diameter pipeline, which crosses the two shipping channels in the Singapore Strait:

the Main Strait (which carries westbound vessels) and the Phillip Channel (which carries eastbound vessels).

Work under the first of the contracts to have been awarded - the 9km PowerGas contract, which was awarded to Boskalis Offshore in March 2001 - was due to be completed in May.

This contract included a 150m onshore connection to the Pulau Sakra receiving station, 9km of offshore dredging and route preparation work, pipeline installation and pipe protection.

Construction of the trench for the new pipeline involved dredging some 700,000m 3ofmaterial, using a cutter suction dredger and the trailing suction hopper dredger Queen of the Netherlands . The route for this section of the pipeline included a number of rocky outcrops, with sharp peaks overlain with residual soils and layers of soft marine clay. The company was also required to remove some extremely hard material, and work with a very high level of accuracy using GPS to ensure that minimal over-dredging occurred. Once the dredging had been completed, unacceptable free spans were eliminated using pre-laid rock supports. This phase of work being completed in December of last year.

Preparatory work for the PGN contract had begun several months before, with dredging getting underway in October 2002. On this section of the pipeline, however, the bulk of the work consisted of leveling the seabed rather than dredging it, although some harder material had to be removed at points along the route. Here, also, pre-lay supports were installed to eliminate any unacceptable freespans.

Boskalis Offshore mobilised a backhoe dredger and a large floating grab crane, Goomai , which was equipped with an 11m 3grab, while at the shore approach at Pulau Pemping Zinkoon V was deployed, fitted with a hydraulic excavator.

Having completed the necessary dredging and leveling work, Boskalis Offshore began installing the pre-laid supports in November using the side stone dumping vessel Cetus .Pipe-laying work from Pulau Sakra got underway in February 2003, with the pipe-lay work being sub-contracted to Global Industries. The main pipe-lay with tie-in to the remaining 2km section landing at Pulau Pemping was completed in March, and a protective layer of finer-grained material was put in place in order to protect a fibre-optic cable that was 'piggy-backed' on the pipeline.

In order to protect the pipeline from ships' anchors, more than two million tonnes of rock is being installed by Boskalis Offshore using the fallpipe barges Zinkoon 6 and Zeepaard , and Cetus . The rock-dumping work started in March 2003, following hydrotesting, and was due to be completed by July 2003.