the facility built only for Edison Chouest- affiliated companies. Following the success of North American Shipbuilding, Edison Chouest opened up five more shipyards in the Americas. It founded North American Fabricators in
Houma,
Louisiana, and Gulf Ship in Gulfport, Mississippi state, in 2006. In Navegantes, Brazil, the Estaleiro NavShip yard was opened by Edison Chouest as the company was a pace-setter in delivering offshore logistics support to Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras. Edison Chouest recognised the huge potential in Brazil, where some rival owners are still trying to enter. The yard employs over 800 skilled workers. The facility features a fabrication building with 14 overhead cranes, allowing vessels to be built indoors. A floating drydock allows NavShip to perform additional inspections and repairs to meet the needs of the rapidly growing Brazilian fleet. Back in the US, Edison Chouest opened a shipyard in Tampa, Florida, and, most recently, La Ship shipyard in Houma. La Ship is the group’s largest shipyard employing more than 1,000 skilled workers on a wide range of new construction projects, as well as repairs, conversions and refits. Some of the yard’s latest work includes construction of new well stimulation vessels and an Arctic Ice-class anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel. In 1996, Chouest founded a new business
to benefit from the then growing deepwater oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, Shell was investing in a host of deepwater projects involving tension-leg platforms and BP had ramped up its exploration plans, which eventually resulted in the giant Thunder Horse and Atlantis projects, as well as other deepwater oilfields. Other oil
majors were
investing in deepwater exploration, attracting investment in new generations of deepwater- capable mobile drilling rigs, which had new logistics requirements.
This prompted Edison Chouest to open
the C-Port deepwater logistics centre at Port Fourchon. Purpose-designed to reduce port turnaround time, the two C-Port terminals comprise 18 specialised slips, configured to safely and efficiently transfer cargo and provide a wide range of support services to accommodate the largest of deepwater offshore vessels. C-Port features include 37 overhead cranes and berths for ships of 8m draughts. Each of the 18 slips at C-Port offers covered staging areas and outdoor storage. Adjacent to the two terminals are secure staging and storage facilities for pipe storage, testing and repair, and bucking services for pipe of up to 12in in diameter. Mr Chouest’s investments recognised that
there. He offshore
did not stop vessels
needed an ever increasing level of technological sophistication in bridge systems and satellite
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Edison Chouest Offshore builds and operates a wide range of vessels from anchor handlers to fast supply boats
Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference and Awards 2012 I 5
Mr Chouest’s company has evolved into one of the largest of its type in the world
communications and, in response, created its Marine Technologies (MT), which provides a wide range of dynamic positioning (DP), automation and complete vessel control systems. MT is a one-stop resource offering vessel control systems, type-approved DP systems and the Bridge Mate integrated bridge system. This has the comprehensive bridge class notation – DNV’s NAUT-AW. The integrated bridge includes consoles for ARPA radar, ecdis, conning, security cameras, sensor control and monitoring, autopilot and thrusters control. MT also supplies the C-Comm, VSAT satellite communication solution that links with Ku-band operators such as Intelsat to offer ship operators seamless global coverage. The BB90 MKII antenna is MT’s latest Ku-band VSAT antenna with faster satellite tracking, cross platform compatibility and the ability to operate on various networks. Another Edison Chouest affiliate is International Marine Systems (IMS), a leading provider of electrical and electronics products, including electronic control and monitoring systems and ABS, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Lloyd’s Register (LR) and US Coast Guard type approved marine PCs.
A generation of technological advances and growing demand from deepwater projects led Gary Chouest to establish the C-Innovation (C-I) business in 2007. This provides a wide range of ROV services, including subsea construction, field development, engineering and project management. The C-I ROV fleet is equipped with intelligent control systems, which feature multiple sensors providing ongoing real-time monitoring and ROV system diagnostics, and allow streaming of video during subsea operations. There is a mid-water station-keeping feature that uses an inertial navigation system combining a ring laser gyro, high accuracy accelerometers and depth sensors to provide very accurate position and velocity. This allows the ROV to maintain a set position throughout the entire water column. Despite all of the stresses of building up a group of this size and complexity, Mr Chouest has kept the company a family-owned business. Gary and his wife Carolyn have been married for 47 years. They have one daughter (Dionne) and four sons (Dino, Damon, Casey and Ross), all of whom are actively involved in the family business. OSJ
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