FEATURE: SUPPORT VESSELS
THE VITAL ROLE OF OFFSHORE SUPPORT VESSELS
Words: Penny Hitchin A
s an island nation we have a long seafaring history, continued by the North Sea offshore industry, which employs a vast range of specialist vessels for oil and gas exploration and production.
Large numbers of specialist ships are employed in the exploration and construction stages of offshore developments. Developers spend eye-watering sums of money to charter sophisticated specialist vessels including survey craft, drilling ships, jack up barges, subsea support vessels and pipelaying vessels.
Once construction has been completed, seagoing ships and boats continue to play a key role. Supply vessels ply the waters taking essential supplies to offshore platforms. They deliver fresh water, food and supplies for crew and spare parts and new machinery for production. Standby vessels provide emergency and rescue services, and also carry out tasks such as maintaining exclusion zones around installations and moving people and supplies between local facilities.
Emergency Response and Rescue Vessels (ERRVs) provide frontline cover for thousands of people working in one of the harshest environments in the world. Every manned offshore installation has an ERRV on standby in case of emergency.
26 Oil&GasCONNECT
Emergency Response and Rescue Vessels
Emergency Response and Rescue Vessels (ERRVs) provide frontline cover for thousands of people working in one of the harshest environments in the world. Every manned offshore installation has an ERRV on standby in case of emergency.
ERRV crews are skilled mariners, trained in rescuing people from the water, giving medical assistance and evacuating people from the installation in case of emergency. ERRV Masters and Mates are specially trained to take over the initial control of rescue activities in the vicinity of a major offshore incident, until the emergency onshore support centres can co-ordinate the whole rescue. Each ERRV is crewed round the clock, 365 days a year.
Rescuing people from the sea is normally carried out by Fast Rescue Craft (FRC) or Daughter Craft. The FRCs are about seven metres long, highly manoeuvrable rigid inflatable boats manned by a crew of three. Each ERRV carries at least 2 FRCs. Daughter Craft are larger than FRCs and are designed to be capable of working at remote locations up to 10 miles from the ERRV. When adverse weather conditions make the use of a FRC impossible, survivors are rescued by specialist equipment that can be used to lift them straight from the sea into the ERRV. Once on board, survivors are cared for in specialist treatment rooms by crew members who have been trained in medical and survival aid. If a survivor requires specialist attention they can be winched from the deck of the ERRV and transferred by helicopter.
ERRVs are also used to carry out other duties including warning shipping that is at risk of collision with installations, inter-field cargo operations, towage assistance and pollution control. Since 1986, North Sea ERRVs have rescued more that 378 people, of which half were oil and gas rescues and the other half from distressed fishing vessels, yachts and merchant ships. In 1988, ERRVs rescued 114
Developers spend eye- watering sums of money to charter sophisticated specialist vessels including survey craft, drilling ships, jack up barges, subsea support vessels and pipelaying vessels.
people in total from the Piper Alpha production platform and the drilling units Ocean Odyssey and Glomar Labrador.
Aberdeen company launches new ERRVs
This year, Aberdeen global shipping and energy services company Craig Group has launched four brand new ERRVs for the oil and gas industry.
The new boats – the Grampian Don, the Grampian Dee, the Grampian Discovery and the Grampian Defiance – were designed by IMT of Montrose and built at the Balenciaga Shipyard, Northern Spain in a £35m contract. Each boat is equipped with one or two daughter craft and one fast rescue craft.
The Grampian Dee is contracted by Valiant Petroleum for exploration drilling support in the Central North Sea. The Grampian Discovery is on contract to Shell to support North Sea drilling operations while the Grampian Don will go on a five year charter to another major operator in the North Sea. The Grampian Defiance will be working on a wind farm contract with DONG E&P until the end of the year. The four new vessels created 120 operational jobs.
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