A MASSIVE oil production vessel finally left the region yesterday to start working off the coast of Africa.
The Bonga, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, left the AMEC yard at Wallsend, North Tyneside, after ten months of engineering work to install 22,500 tonnes of oil processing equipment.
The Bonga, which is the biggest vessel to sail up the River Tyne, is on its way to Nigeria.
When operational, it will extract and process up to 225,000 barrels of oil a day and store up to two million barrels of oil.
AMEC has a major operations centre in Yarm Road, Darlington, undertaking oil, petrochemical and infrastructure projects in the UK and overseas.
An AMEC spokesman said: "Over 2,500 people were involved in Bonga at the peak of activity at the AMEC facility, with many ancillary jobs also being created in the Tyneside region."
AMEC, the international engineering services company, provides design, project delivery and maintenance support to clients in the oil and gas, transport, industrial and infrastructure sectors.
The Bonga's departure has been delayed by bad weather.
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