September/October 2021 - 109

FEATURE ARTICLE
Night drilling of CFA piles at Predio 2
Rigid Inclusions, Piles for Mexican Oil Refinery
MSB chartered a ship to transport
The construction of an oil products
refinery in Mexico required that deep
foundations for petroleum product
tanks, water storage tanks and pipe
racks be installed at two locations in the
new facility in the Mexican State of
Tabasco. When finished, the projects at
the Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) Dos
Bocas Refinery in Paraíso, Mexico, will
form part of the nation's largest oil
products refinery.
In some areas of the first project,
called Predio 1, loose sand and liquefaction
concerns required additional
geotechnical testing and subsurface
model development that produced new
engineering solutions. To address such
challenges, Shea Brothers Mexico (SBM),
with equipment support from Morris -
Shea Bridge Company (MSB), and project
support from Mexican partner GBC
Cimentaciones, installed a combination
of more than 9,000 continuous flight
auger (CFA) rigid inclusions (RI), DeWaal
drilled displacement (DDP) RI and CFA
piles at the PEMEX facility.
equipment from Mobile, Alabama, to the
PEMEX dock at the Dos Bocas Refinery
jobsite. Equipment mobilized to the
project site included 5 Fundex F3500
drill rigs, 7 Schwing 1250 track-mounted
concrete pumps, 2 Xtreme 30,000 pound
(13,068 kg) capacity reach forks, and 32
containers of drill rig parts, tooling, spare
parts and other consumables.
Predio 1 Project
Site Conditions: The Predio 1 jobsite
contains 14 tank sites and consists of
1,448 acres (586 ha), with some site
improvements having been made prior
to the arrival of the SBM drilling
equipment. Dynamic compaction and
other soi l improvement s were
completed in 2019 and 2020. When SBM
arrived at the project site, only dirt roads
and graded soil existed. Difficulties
concerning alternating layers of loose
sand and soft to medium stiff clay were
compounded by liquefiable soils in the
south end of Predio 1.
AUTHOR Gordon King, Morris-Shea Bridge Company
DEEP FOUNDATIONS * SEPT/OCT 2021 * 109
Petroleum and Water Tanks: SBM
began production of deep foundations
for the petroleum tanks on August 17,
2020, at Predio 1 with three Fundex
F3500 drill rigs. A total of 2,808 16 in (40
cm) CFA rigid inclusions were installed
to a depth of 92 ft (6 m) in the northern
section of Predio 1. These RI support
nine petroleum product tanks with pile
quantities ranging from 70 RI to as
many as 631 RI per tank. Foundations
for the nine tanks were completed in
October 2020.
SBM then relocated to the southern
end of the refinery site to begin drilling
piles for five 180 ft (55 m) diameter water
tanks. A quantity of 873 RI was initially
specified for each tank. Prior to
beginning work, it was determined that
two additional rings of RI be incorporated
into each tank's specification,
increasing the overall pile quantity per
tank to 1,123 rigid inclusions. A total of
5,615 drilled displacement RI was
installed to a depth of 69 ft (21 m) to
support the five tanks.
September/October 2021

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