A unique and long-awaited sight arrived at one of Europe’s busiest ports early January - Allseas’ 382m-long, 124m-wide platform installation/decommissioning and pipelay mega-vessel Pieter Schelte.
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KOTUG tugs RT Magic and RT Spirit assist the Pieter Schelte to her berthing place in the Rotterdam Alexiahaven. |
The giant €2.4billion, twin-hull vessel left ship builder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering’s Okpo shipyard in South Korea 17 November, after four years’ construction, stopping by Singapore and Cape Town.
The vessel, which entered the Rotterdam harbor on her own propulsion, is due to be moored at a rented deepwater site at Rotterdam’s new Maasvlakte in order to have a topsides lift-system beams installed on the bows.
Test lifts with the system will then be carried out on a test platform in the Southern North Sea, which Allseas is building, after which the vessel is due to remove the Talisman Yme platform topsides, in summer 2015.
The removal of the Shell Brent Delta platform is planned later in the summer of 2015, or in the spring of 2016. The vessel was also lined up for a pipelay job on the South Stream offshore pipeline section, but the project was put on hold by Russian president Vladimir Putin 1 December, citing European Union opposition.
The Pieter Schelte, the brainchild of Allseas founder Edward Heerema, has been 25 years in the planning. The vessel was designed to make a significant impact on the heavy lift capability currently available in the global offshore market, both for platform installation and decommissioning; and pipelay with its 2000-tonne (2205 short tons) tension capacity S-Lay pipelay package.
Its lift capability is given as an eye-watering 48,000-tonne (53,000 short tons) for topsides and 25,000-tonne (27,500 short tons) for jackets.
But, Allseas also sees a market for an even larger vessel. Speaking last year, Edward Heerema told OE that the interest in the vessel [Pieter Schelte] and its potential has been enough to lead Allseas to consider building a second single-lift vessel that will exceed even the Pieter Schelte’s 48,000-tonne topside lifting capacity, by 50%, to 72,000-tonne.
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