Offshore support specialists Olympic Shipping

OFFSHORE SUPPORT SPECIALISTS

The vessels of the Norwegian firm Olympic Shipping AS provide support for offshore oil and gas production. Industry Europe looks at the company’s history, structure and high profile client base.

Olympic Shipping owns and operates a fleet of vessels that are used in the offshore oil and gas industry. The company’s ships include platform supply vessels, subsea vessels, anchor handling tug supply vessels and offshore construction vessels. The main purpose of Olympic’s ships, as the company’s president and CEO Captain Remøy explained, is to serve offshore oil rigs and gas platforms. “Anchor handling tug supply vessels have the job of moving the rigs,” he said, “and the job of subsea vessels is to survey the seabed.”

Captain Remøy founded Olympic together with Bjørn Kvaslund in 1996. The company is based in Fosnavåg, a fishing port on the west coast of Norway that is also an important centre of the offshore industry. “People from here have been working at sea for generations,” said Captain Remøy, “and we have shipyards and designers close by.”

Olympic Shipping has cooperated in many offshore projects in the North Sea and the Barents Sea, and the company has built up extensive experience of cold and harsh conditions. “In the Barents Sea or off Greenland, it is dark most of the year,” stated Captain Remøy. “The simplest thing the crew has to get used to is that if you leave cargo out on deck, it will get iced up.” In the early years, Olympic Shipping’s operations were confined to the Norwegian continental shelf. However, its vessels now work all over the world, and can be found off west Africa and Brazil and in the Mediterranean.

Operations and projects

Olympic’s clients include prominent companies such as Statoil and Shell. As Captain Remøy explained, the energy majors need to employ Olympic’s services because they lack the ship operations that are required for offshore projects. Olympic’s vessels are not ordinary ships. “A vessel is complex and full of technology, and we aim to make the vessel as flexible as possible. Oil production is moving from shallower to deeper waters, which is one reason why our industry has to remain innovative.”

Offshore vessels need special technical capabilities for such tasks as assisting in the construction of a platform or building up the infrastructure on the seabed. One important project in which Captain Remøy’s ships were involved was in building the Langeled pipeline from Norway to the UK. The pipeline supplies the United Kingdom with around 20 per cent of its natural gas. The source of the gas is the Ormen Lange field in the Norwegian Sea. The pipeline takes the gas to the terminal at Easington in Yorkshire. It is the longest subsea export pipeline in the world, and almost a million tonnes of steel were used in its construction.

Protecting the environment

Olympic Shipping’s slogan, ‘best operating practices’, reflects the company’s determination to avoid environmental damage. Olympic’s environmental management system is certified to ISO 14001:2004. The company has lowered carbon emissions by using hybrid technology to power the anchor handling tug supply and offshore construction vessels, the Olympic

Zeus and Olympic Hera. As Captain Remøy explained, for offshore operations, hybrid propulsion systems enable savings of up to 50 per cent on the cost of fuel. Diesel is what gets the ship out to the site; electricity proves its worth once the ship starts to do its job.

“We can shut off the diesel engine once we start working out on the seabed. The ship is stationery about 60 or 70 per cent of the time, and then it can use electricity. It might be that the ship is pulling with a crane, but it might be that the ship is alongside a rig just waiting for something. With the hybrid mechanism, there are five generators. We can manage big operations in diesel electric mode, but we don’t need to use all five generators unless a lot of power is required. It’s the same idea as not having the lights on in every room of the house if you are using only one room. Technology counts – our competitors don’t have this level of flexibility and sophistication.”

New orders and contracts

Captain Remøy started out with two offshore vessels and one deep sea trawler. Olympic now has a large fleet of highly sophisticated vessels, including a large multi-purpose field supply and construction vessel from the nearby Kleven Verft shipyard at Ulsteinvik which is equipped for oil recovery operations.

Olympic recently entered into a longterm contract with Reef Subsea Norway AS for a subsea support and construction vessel to be delivered from Kleven Verft AS in August 2013. The contract terms are reflecting the strong subsea market and the demand for such well-equipped vessels as this. n