Gulf Marine Services introduces the ENDURANCE

The GMS ENDURANCE is a uniquely designed, self-propelled, self elevating jackup barge currently under construction in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and, once delivered, will be one of the most flexible and capable vessels in the market.

Gulf Marine Services (GMS), the Middle East region’s largest elevating support vessel operator, has developed the design along with MSC Gusto. It has an operating water depth of up to 213 ft (65 m), accommodation for 150 persons, deck space of 10,764 sq ft (1,000 sq m), deck load of 11,350 tonnes, self propelled DP2 (dynamic positioning), heavy-lift crane capacity of up to 350 tonnes, and four legs for faster jacking on location.

The jackup barge design is set to operate in deeper waters and harsh environments.?The design’s extreme flexibility will be suited to a much wider range of opportunities than existing vessels currently in the market. Offshore accommodation and construction, well intervention and workovers, and drilling completions are some of the key oil and gas sectors GMS ENDURANCE has been targeted to work in.

The company also has plans to expand into the renewables sector, and with the vessel currently under construction and another sister vessel, GMS ENDEAVOUR, also under construction, this will position GMS as one of the only providers of jackup barges capable of working in the sector.

The GMS ENDURANCE is the first of two new Gusto 2500X vessels planned by GMS over the next year, with the GMS ENDEAVOUR currently having its hull towed to the company’s Mussafah shipyard for completion in 2010. The barges have been designed with a view to further increasing GMS’ presence in the Middle Eastern, West African, and North Sea markets.

(Cable)less for seismic land acquisition

Climbing crews used biodegradable epoxy to deploy VectorSeis sensors on cliff faces. (Photo courtesy of Vertical Systems International)



One of the world’s most advanced cableless land acquisition seismic systems recently overcame a series of daunting operational and imaging challenges by acquiring high-density, full-wave data to support redevelopment of a fractured shale reservoir in the rugged mountains of northwestern Colorado.

The success of the Durham Ranch survey marked the first commercial deployment of Version 2.0 of the FireFly ecosystem, a technology introduced in 2005 by Houston-based ION Geophysical to resolve the numerous imaging and scalability limitations of cable-based seismic-acquisition technology.

For the Durham Ranch shoot, Geokinetics crews deployed more than 6,000 FireFly field station units (FSUs) incorporating ION VectorSeis multicomponent receivers and acquiring more than 10,500 receiver points, detonating nearly 7,000 dynamite shot points in just 20 days of shooting.

Densely sampled data were acquired within the specified 45-day time period and under budget from the remote, environmentally sensitive area, which is home to numerous species of wildlife and hosts extensive ranching operations. Climbing crews deployed VectorSeis sensors — which are tilt-insensitive — on the faces of shear rock cliffs within the 30-square-mile (78-sq-km) survey area by gluing them in place with a biodegradable epoxy.

Despite such imaging challenges, FireFly demonstrated excellent reliability on the Durham Ranch survey. The performance showed why cableless seismic acquisition technology promises to bring unprecedented convenience, portability, and speed to the process of collecting high-density multicomponent seismic data in increasingly challenging environments.