SPECIAL FEATURE
Offshore Developments


Mærsk Frontier discharging to the jack-up Mærsk Endeavour, one of three jack-ups sold by Maersk Contractors in the beginning of June. The buyer was a Bermuda-based investment company, which will take over the Maersk Exerter, the Maersk Enhancer and the Mærsk Endeavour in two years. All rigs are built in 1982. Photo: Bent Mikkelsen

Offshore – booming after years in the doldrums
Offshore is a booming business. The fact is easily established by looking at the number of ships on order, as well as the orders in the industry. The number of orders has not been higher for 20 years and this came as a surprise for most of the business about 12 months ago, when it all took a turn after years of doldrums.

Production from the Snorre field is mainly oil at an average of 125,000 barrels per day and gas at 0.02 billion scm. All production and processing equipment is located on floating steel platforms. The Snorre A platform is pictured here.

Less Norwegian oil
– but more natural gas
Norway is the world’s third-largest oil and gas exporter, after Saudi Arabia and Russia. But while oil production has declined since 2001 to average 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) last year and perhaps 2.6 million bpd this year, natural gas exports are expected 11.5 per cent higher to 95 billion cubic metres (3.28 trillion cubic feet) in 2007. Gas sales are expected at 93 billion cubic metres this year, rising to 109 billion cubic metres in 2008.

The seismic and environment protecting vessel St. Barbara. Photo: Pawel Anflink

Petrobaltic – tantamount
to Polish offshore
Petrobaltic is ranked by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita as the sixth most profitable Polish company of the previous year and as the 609th largest company, up 18 places compared to 2005. Petrobaltic’s greatest asset is the knowledge, experience and competence of its personnel. The company has a staff of 475, of whom 240 work at sea. Over 40 per cent of all employees hold a university degree and nearly ten per cent have worked in the company for over ten years.

A comfortable year
with the X-bow
It has been a year since the first ship of the new revolutionary X-bow design was delivered to Bourbon Offshore Norway, and so far it has been all good.
“I can say that all our expectations have been fulfilled”, says Bjørn Bergsnes, Technical manager at Bourbon Offshore.

Esvagt Carpathia is the first of six sistervessels from ASL Shipyard in Singapore.

Esvagt Carpathia: Ready
to spend two years on duty
Esvagt A/S is looking north on the ocean, after signing five contracts with Norwegian Statoil for five ships over a period of two to five years.
“A milestone in Esvagt’s history”, says Ovin Carlsson, CEO of Esvagt. “We have been working on the Norwegian market for a long time, which seems to be fruitful now and in the future.”

Former train ferry becomes
a floating production unit
In last year’s offshore theme issue we presented the story of the conversion of the former train ferry Karl, which was planned to be an offshore construction vessel for a Far East operator. This article continues the story, giving a look at opportunities in the offshore business.

Fuel cell propulsion at the horizon
Based on the island of Bømlo north of Haugesund in Western Norway, the offshore shipping company Eidesvik is situated right in the middle of the nature it is trying to preserve. The highly environmentally concerned company uses state-of-the-art technology to reduce its environmental impact, and the company expects that we will see the first commercial fuel cell propulsion system on ship in 2011–2012.

Kristiansand: Engineering capital of the offshore industry
When thinking about offshore in Norway, the name Stavanger is one of the first things to strike you, but in fact another name is quite obvious too: Kristiansand.
Although the city is situated some 350 km from Stavanger, it has a great influence on what goes on in Stavanger and vice–versa, as a lot of the offshore know-how is in Kristiansand. SSG has taken a tour in Kristiansand to feel the pulse of the industry, where it all started in early 1966, just before the drill was put in the sea on the Ekofisk field in the Norwegian sector as the first construction to the sector was made in Kristiansand.

In the Kristiansand area most of the work is brain work. The engineering part of offshore is a major part of the work in Southern Norway. Photo: Aker Kværner

Service provider
for the whole industry
Kristiansand Havn plays a central role in the booming offshore industry in the city. Owned by the municipality of Kristiansand, the port is in a situation like many other ports in the world: selling off old facilities to build houses and constructing new facilities for modern shipping.

American one-stop shopping
National Oilwell Varco does not sound Norwegian, which is not all that wrong as the company is owned in Houston, Texas, the number one oil related city in the world.
The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. National Oilwell Varco has strong Norwegian relations, as a conglomerate of Norwegian companies has been part of a merger and acquisitions, giving the company a strong foothold in Norway.

Only mindwork at Origo
Origo Engineering AS is an example of a Kristiansand based offshore related company with only mind work and no physical construction at all. The seven-year old company employs 42 people, of whom 40 are engineers providing solutions to the offshore industry in control and safety systems on existing installations.

Providing safety
for transportation
Southern Marine AS and its subsidiary Southern Marine Consult AS is an example of the difference in size of the companies servicing the offshore industry in Kristiansand and is organised under the NODE umbrella. Today the company is a nine-person operation serving the industry with a number of services.

Equipment supply
from Aker Kværner MH
Aker Kværner is a major player in the offshore industry – also in the Kristiansand area. Especially Aker Kværner MH. The letters MH are what is left of the famous company Maritime Hydraulics, which has been merged with the Aker Kværner Group.

New standards
for offshore loading
Aker Kværner Pusnes is part of the Kristiansand offshore environment, although the company is situated in Arendal some miles up the coast from Kristiansand. Pusnes has a shipbuilding history, as the premises housed a shipyard until the end of the 1960s.

Bleo Holm FPSO, owned by Bluewater, began working the Ross and Bake fields in the North Sea in 2001. The fields have a production lifetime of 14 years and peak production will be 40,000 barrels per day.

Growing number
of FPSOs in operation
Technical advances in production, mooring and offloading system in Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels have made these units even more flexible. 90 or so FPSOs are currently in operation worldwide (against 61 units a year ago) of which 22 in the North Sea, 21 off Africa, 34 off Asia and Australia and 13 off North and South America. On the last available count 21 FPSO units were either under construction or being converted at various yard, mainly in the Far East.