Continuous registration of vessel traffic above pipelines via the proposed Automatic Identification System (AIS) represents a significant improvement on pipeline operators' emergency response to possible mechanical damage, says Jens Erik Thygesen…
Five Ashtech ProFlex 500 GNSS receivers are helping guide the operations of the self-propelled offshore wind turbine installation vessel Bard Wind Lift I during construction of the first commercial wind farm in the German North Sea. The GNSS receivers are used for the jackup's every manoeuvre…
Following a recent flurry of new contracts, Marine Subsea UK is currently carrying out a multi-client well abandonment programme for a number of North Sea operators. Managing director Alasdair Cowie talks to Meg Chesshyre about how he sees the multiclient approach as the way forward…
Macondo mattersSir, OE's article by Ian Fitzsimmons on preventing future Macondo spills [‘Macondo and other titanic struggles', OE July] was excellent and I distributed a copy to my colleagues both in EIA and DOE. The recommendations made…
Newly merged contractors Royal Boskalis Westminster and Smit Internationale got a foretaste of the operational synergies expected to stem from this move when their activities coincided earlier this year in the Strait of Magellan at the remote southernmost tip of Argentina…
With the UK poised to introduce an offshore carbon storage licensing regime, a process and design optimisation specialist and an Aberdeen-headquartered engineering, construction, operations maintenance and project management group are planning…
Gas is part of the solution to the global energy challenge says Brian Bjordal, president and CEO of Gassco, whose throughput of gas has doubled in just ten years. Meg Chesshyre reports.On the positive side, notes Bjordal, there are significant…
Engineering and building production facilities in-house not only saves money but can also give offshore suppliers a sizeable market edge. That's been the case, and not for the first time, at Moerdijk-based offshore steel wire ropes, cable-laid…
Weather is a major factor when planning offshore drilling campaigns. Asbjørn Stålesen of FMC Technologies says the company's Real Time Operating Limits system has allowed it to increase the time available for carrying out drilling work.The biggest…
With a major Russian Arctic contract already in the bag for next year, the Tideway Group is looking at early payback on its €115 million investment in the industry's first ice-class fallpipe rockdump vessel.Dubbed Flintstone, the DP2 vessel…
OE 's analysis of current rig market data is updated monthly using statistics provided by Rigzone.comWorldwide utilization for the mobile offshore drilling fleet is tracking at 76%, near the top of a 74%-76% band that it has traversed over the past 11 months…
The last couple of years have seen fairly lean pickings for offshore fabricators in the Netherlands and on the UK east coast. But for one Dutch yard, paradoxically, things could scarcely have gone better.HSM in Schiedam, already sitting on a…
Wave and tidal energy specialist Marine Current Turbines and its project partners Queen's University Belfast, Mojo Maritime and Edinburgh University, have secured a grant of £250,000 from the UK's Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering…
With holding power over 100 times their own weight as well as clear economic advantages, the first drag embedment anchors made quite a splash in the offshore industry in the 1970s. Yet some project engineers still feel more comfortable with…
Within days of sister company Heerema Fabrication Group handing over the largest offshore deck ever built in the Netherlands, Heerema Marine Contractors was announcing plans to diversify its installation fleet with a multirole monohull vessel…