Saudi Aramco Awards First Contract For Planned Shipyard Complex

Saudi Aramco said it has awarded the first major contract in the planned construction of a $5.2 billion shipyard complex designed to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil exports.

The national oil company said on Aug. 8 it awarded the contract for dredging, reclamation and marine structures to a consortium comprising Saudi Archirodon Co. and Huta Hegerfeld AG Saudia Co.

Aramco, which is leading construction of the shipyard, did not reveal the value of the contract but said it would be completed by 2020. Among other things, it includes building 4,500 m (14,764 ft) of concrete quay walls and wharves as well as breakwaters at Ras Al Khair on the east coast.

MEO, Self Subsea Line Up Work For Nusantara

Miclyn Express Offshore (MEO) has reached an agreement with Shelf Subsea to charter the Nusantara dive support vessel for two years with options to extend, a news release said.

Plans are to use the 80-m (262-ft) vessel for integrated diving and ROV services in the Asia-Pacific region. The vessel features a 15-man saturation diving system, three-man diving bell, 50T man riding AHC crane, helideck and 700 sq m (7,535 sq ft) of clear deck area, the release said. The vessel will be fitted with two work class ROVs, which will remain onboard during the charter.

DNV GL Conducts Sea Drone Survey

DNV GL surveyors have carried out the classification society’s first offshore drone survey on the semisubmersible tender support vessel (TSV) Safe Scandinavia in the North Sea.

The TSV vessel is owned and operated by Prosafe and it is supporting Statoil’s drilling operations offshore Norway. Using camera-equipped drones, DNV GL’s drone pilots checked the TSV’s fairleads and their connection with the vessel’s two columns as part of the intermediate survey.

“Innovation is one of Prosafe’s core values. We are very pleased that we chose to try the drone survey, as it helped us optimize our survey requirements and allowed us to save significant amounts of time and money. Normally, this kind of operation would cause disruption to our client for several days. The drone survey took only a few hours and was just as effective,” said Ian Young, COO at Prosafe.

“The inspection of such spaces can be both costly and time consuming, and even in some instances potentially dangerous. Using drones to visually check the condition of remote structural components can significantly reduce survey times and staging costs, while at the same time improving surveyor safety,” DNV GL said.

“DNV GL has built a network of trained drone pilots based in Gdynia, Piraeus, Singapore, Houston and Shanghai. This allows drone survey inspections to be offered from any of these hubs.”

Analyst: 28% Of Offshore Vessels Currently Laid Up

U.K.-based data provider VesselsValue (VV) has determined that 28% of the global offshore oil and gas fleet is currently laid up.

The conclusion was reached by senior offshore analyst Charlie Hockless using the company’s VV@ mapping service. Enduring the worst of this downturn are platform supply vessels, Hockless said, a category with a 36% lay-up rate.

“Estimating the number of vessels in lay-up is an imperfect science, however, using a Big Data approach VesselsValue can provide a valid estimation using the following methodology,” Hockless said. “VV observes the recency of a vessel’s [automatic identification system] signal and filters the data appropriately. Vessels that have not signaled for over a week are considered to be in lay-up.”

The VesselsValue offshore database covers offshore support vessels, offshore construction vessels and mobile offshore drilling units such as drillships, semisubmersibles and jackups.

—Staff Reports

Offshore