Seaworthy North Sea Shipping

SEAWORTHY

The Norwegian company, North Sea Shipping AS, has a fleet of specialised ships that serve the offshore oil and gas industry. Joseph Altham spoke to Knut Karstein Rabben, North Sea Shipping’s General manager, to hear about the difficult work these ships do and the new offshore construction vessel the company has commissioned.

North Sea Shipping is one of the most experienced shipping companies in the offshore industry, with a history of involvement in offshore oil and gas that goes back to 1984. The company is based in Austevoll, a group of islands whose main industries are fishing and offshore energy. The headquarters of North Sea Shipping are in the village of Bakkasund, right on the quayside.

Other firms charter the company’s ships for all kinds of offshore work. These tasks include laying power cables and pipes and conducting seismic surveys, together with general inspection, repair and maintenance work.

Besides the office in Bakkasund, North Sea Shipping also has a branch in Spain, in the port city of Vigo. At the shipyard in Vigo, North Sea Shipping uses its expertise to manage and supervise construction of new vessels for its clients. North Sea Shipping employs a total of around 120 people, including the ships’ crews. The crews, as Mr Rabben explained, are in a demanding profession. “Members of the crew of an offshore vessel need special skills. They have to have special knowledge of electrical equipment and must be able to operate the cranes. They must also have dynamic positioning experience and be prepared to work in cold weather.”

Atlantic Guardian

North Sea Shipping’s most important vessels are the Atlantic Guardian and the North Sea Giant. According to Mr Rabben, this year, the Atlantic Guardian has been conducting seismic surveys of areas of the North Sea. In oil exploration, seismic

surveys are used to build up a picture of the rock formations under the seabed. By shooting sound waves to the bottom of the sea, and then using receivers to record the way the sound waves are reflected, scientists can create a model of the rock under the sea to determine whether it contains any deposits of oil and gas. “A seismic survey is for developing a new oilfield,” said Mr Rabben. “These surveys can identify where there is a pocket of oil. There is still some oil left in the North Sea and seismic vessels are helping to find it.” The oil industry has been using seismic surveys for many years but the work is made easier today with the aid of modern information technology, which allows data to be transmitted from the ship via satellite to a laboratory for analysis.

North Sea Giant

Finding the ‘black gold’ is only the first step, and most of the work of the offshore vessels is about enabling oil production. North Sea Giant is the newest ship in the company’s fleet. As the name suggests, this is one of the largest and most advanced subsea construction vessels ever built. The ship is equipped with a Rolls Royce tunnel thruster and five Voith Schneider propellers. The ship needs all this power not for speed but in order to achieve stability. An offshore vessel has to have excellent station keeping capability in order to do its job, and the ship’s dynamic positioning system holds her steady even when the waves are high. “The ergonomic system keeps the vessel in the same position even in a five metre high sea.” The other vital attribute of North Sea Giant is its high redundancy – which means there is a lot of backup on the ship if anything goes wrong. “If something goes out of action,

the ship must be able to recover and get away. If you didn’t have high redundancy, then in the worst case, you might have a situation where a ship started to drift into an oil platform. For a ship to drift off in the middle of a construction job could do an awful lot of damage.”

New commission

North Sea Shipping clearly believes it’s better to be safe than sorry and Mr Rabben sounds like a man with a generally cautious outlook on life. “Oil prices are high and oil companies are investing now, but you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” However, he did acknowledge – a little reluctantly – that North Sea Shipping is confident about its own prospects. “We’ve commissioned a new offshore construction vessel. The ST-261 is very similar to the North Sea Giant and is being built in Bergen for delivery in June 2014. So I suppose this is a sign of our confidence.”

From its tranquil island location, North Sea Shipping cooperates with major players in the global offshore industry. After being chartered by Technip, North Sea Giant has been working in the Goliat oilfield in the Barents Sea. “The Goliat project is a big undertaking. The end user is Eni Norge. The vessel has been laying pipes and cables, which is an important job for the oil company.”

In the North Sea the vessel has been lying cable at Vigdis oilfield for Statoil, cable laying at Hyme oilfield for Statoil and at Rochelle oilfield for Endeavour. Any client of North Sea Shipping can be sure both that the vessels are fit for purpose and that they are properly maintained. “Our ships must be kept in good repair and everyone in our crews is qualified.” n