VESSELS, RIGS, & SURFACE SYSTEMS Russell McCulley • Houston
Allseas announced plans to build a second
single-lift platform installation and decommissioning vessel even larger than the company’s Pieter Schelte, now under construction at
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in Korea. The as-yet-unnamed vessel will
measure 160 m (525 ft) in width, compared
to Pieter Schelte’s 124 m (406 ft), and will have
a topsides lift capacity of 72,000 metric tons.
Allseas said the newbuild will be operational
in 2020.
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Seadrill Ltd. struck a deal to acquire the
Prospector 3 high-spec jackup from Prospector Offshore Drilling for $235 million. The
newbuild rig is scheduled for delivery from
Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Offshore in
1Q 2014. The F&G JU2000E-design jackup
will be capable of operating in water depths
up to 400 ft (122 m) and drilling to a total
depth of 35,000 ft ( 10,668 m).
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Sea Trucks Group will retroft the Jascon
25 pipelay and construction vessel for use
as an accommodation unit at the Exxon
Neftegas-operated Akutun-Dagi project off
Sakhalin, Russia. The contract, with Daewoo
Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, will
begin in 2Q 2014 and run for 120 days, with
an option to extend for another 90 days. Sea
Trucks will add modular accommodation
units to bring total capacity to 595.
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French offshore services company Bour-
bon announced the sale of two 10-year-old
anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessels,
the Bourbon Surf and Bourbon Borgstein, for a
total of $130 million. Bourbon will continue
to operate the two vessels for a minimum
two years and a maximum period up to fve
years. The company said the sale continues
its strategy of feet modernization.
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Prosafe has entered a letter of intent with
COSCO (Qidong) Offshore Co. for the en-
gineering, procurement, and construction of
two semisubmersible accommodation ves-
sels, with options for four additional units.
The semis, based on the Gusto MSC Ocean
500 design, will each be equipped with 500
beds, DP- 3 systems, 10-point chain mooring,
and a 300-metric ton crane. The two initial
units will cost around $200 million each.
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Keppel FELS has secured a $1.1-billion
repeat order from Transocean to build fve
KFELS Super B Class jackups. The rigs are
scheduled for delivery from 1Q 2016 to 3Q
2017. Transocean has an option to build
another fve similar jackups. Last year, the
company sold the majority of its older jackup
feet to Dubai-based startup Shelf Drilling. •
Industry veterans Brian Chang and rig designer Peter Nimmo have teamed up to develop a new
mat-supported jackup, dubbed the Mono Column Platform (MCP). The rig combines a fixed jacket,
square truss leg, mat foundation and a jacking system, and will be capable of operating in depths
up to 500 ft (152 m). The design has received an approval in principle from ABS, and the first
rig, Calm Ocean 101, is currently being built on spec with delivery planned for 4Q 2014. Chang,
founder of PROMET, now known as PPL Shipyard, and Yantai Raffles (now CIMC Raffles), is
chairman and CEO of Blue Capital Pte. Ltd., which is financing the MCP through its Calm Oceans
subsidiary. The new design can support a topside payload of 5,000 metric tons and can be outfitted with accommodations, production facilities, cranes, or drilling equipment. The company says
the MCP is well suited to marginal fields and fasttrack developments, fields with soft seabeds,
and high wave height conditions. (Image courtesy Calm Oceans)
SBM Offshore’s Cidade de Ilhabela FPSO left Chengxi Shipyard in Guangzhou, China, in November, bound for SBM’s Brasa facility in Brazil, where the vessel will be outfitted with process modules. The $1-billion tanker conversion, SBM’s largest FPSO project to date, will be deployed to the
Petrobras-operated Sapinhoá field in the first half of 2014. SBM also announced the $180-million
sale of the SBM Installer, a newbuild diving support and construction vessel, to a subsidiary of
Daya Vessels. The sale is part of a strategy to refocus the company’s core business on FPSOs
“while continuing to dispose of non-core assets,” said SBM Offshore CEO Bruno Chabas. (Image
courtesy SBM Offshore)
