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IBC ENERGY OFFSHORE
SUPPORT VESSEL CONFERENCE
On 12th and 13th of this
month IBC Energy which is a division of the Informa Group, held a conference
on Offshore Support Vessels. Informa is a group so large that the human mind
can hardly encompass it, but for us its most important role is the
publication of Lloyds List and its associated journals.
The conference was well
organised, well I was Chairman on the second day, and full of useful
information. I am sure it was rewarding for all those who had spent the
quite large sums it took to be there. However, despite the interest and
immediacy of the subject it was noticeable that there were only a few
delegates from the customers, the oil companies, the people who will end up
using the ships which were the subject of the conference.
This is of course usually
the case. They are all too busy. In some cases this is not surprising since
there seems to be a constant objective amongst the operators to try to do
the same job with less staff, and in some cases this puts quite a strain on
the people who are left. Faced with an increased workload and the
opportunity of retiring early with "the package" many of the older and wiser
employees move on, leaving younger and less experienced staff with the
problem of working out how to do the job with fewer resources. But I
digress. Most of this newsletter will be take n up with topics raised at the
conference.
SUBMARINE RESCUE
A late topic the
conference was that of submarine rescue. Nearly all of us will remember the
tragic loss of the Kursk, and those of us in and on the periphery of the
offshore industry will recollect the involvement of the Normand Pioneer
which was hired to act as the mother ship for the British rescue submarine.
Of course this submarine rescue service had been available for years before,
and remained available there-after, and both the British and the Americans
have been developing an improved system, which is more effective and more
portable.
Commander Jon Gething and
Lt Commander Stuart Little told the conference about recent developments,
and really appealed for assistance from the industry. The participants in
the development of the latest submarine rescue system are Britain, France
and Norway and the system is just about ready. The developers have accepted
that the system will either have to be mounted on one of the very few
government vessels which have been prepared to carry out the task, or else
it will need to be fitted to an offshore support vessel.
The scenario is that a
submarine is stuck on the seabed somewhere in the world, and of course for
the personnel in it to be rescued it must be in relatively shallow waters.
The rescue submarine together with its A-frame and support equipment
will be dispatched by truck from its base to Prestwick where there will be
waiting one of the extremely large freight aircraft which can carry the full
kit. The aircraft is loaded up and takes to the air.
Meanwhile a supply vessel
is hired in the approximate locality of the distress. Of course a major
consideration is the availability of an airport large enough for the freight
aircraft to land. The supply vessel is prepared for the mounting of the
equipment on the deck, by the removal of the deck planking. When the
equipment arrives the dockside a standard mounting frame is welded to the
deck and on this the A-Frame and all the other equipment is bolted down.
When this has been done the ships sails for the location and the
rescue is carried out. They believe that the ship with the submarine on can
be at the rescue site in 72 hours from the time they receive the distress
message.
Their point was that it
would be possible for supply ships to be built already fitted with the bolt
holes required to tie down the rescue equipment, and this would save about
12 hours in the rescue timeline. The commercial attraction would be the
publicity the ship and therefore the company would get. There were
representatives from a number of ship-owners at the conference, so who
knows. As I said to start with, we still remember the Normand Pioneer.
ENVIRONMENTAL
APPLICATION
The game is up for the
shipping industry. The airlines who up to now have been the villains in the
environmental case, have realised that of all means of transport it is the
shipping industry which creates the most unfriendly emissions. Well
naturally we would say. Ships transport nearly everything in its raw or
manufactured state. However ship-owners cannot really get away from the fact
that many of them have, in the interests of economy, purchased engines which
can burn the unburnable and that as a result the air over the major shipping
routes of the world is replete with sulphur.
The Norwegians, as usual
impressively ahead of the game, are taxing the owners of Norwegian
registered ships on their levels of unpleasant emissions. Naturally the
ship-owners are distressed at being singled out, and are hoping that in the
fullness of time all other registries will follow suit. Personally I can't
see this happening too fast. What sort of tax might the Bolivian registry
levy. What about the Marshall Islands. Lets face it the only reason for the
existence of many of these registries has only been to reduce the costs to
the owners of the vessels.
In any case the support
vessel conference was enlightened by Dag Stenersen of Marintek who have done
the research, and entertained by Tom Karlsen who works for Simon Mokster who
have put the research into practice. The Stil Pioneer is a ground breaking
standby vessel working in the Norwegian sector, and in addition to having a
helideck and a ramp in the stern up which the FRCs are recovered, it has a
particle reducing system in the exhaust in some complex way powered by urea
- which for those who are not up to date with these things is crystalised
cow's pee.
It seems likely that if
there is a proliferation of the system, which we were told is amazingly
effective, there will eventually be a shortage of cow's pee.
RISK ASSESSMENTS
Our contribution to the
conference was a workshop on risk assessment for supply vessel owners,
based on our experience facilitating such processes for the owners of
mobile units in the pursuit of safety case accreditation. We think it worked
OK, but in honesty only a few people were interested, and two of those who
attended were from banks, one assumes more interested in business risk than
safety risk.
Curiously, on the very
day I left for London I received notice of a new safety flash on the Marine
Safety Forum website, and I downloaded it and took it with me as an example
of, as I saw it, failure to assess risk.
You can have a look
at it yourselves. It is safety flash 07-28.
If you have a ship
working on the weather side of an installation, under what-ever control
system, the risks are greater than if the ship is on the lee side. If the
weather is marginal the risks are greater. If the big block is in use
requiring the ship to be close to the installation the risks are greater. If
there are bits sticking out of the installation the risks of penetration of
the hull are greater. If any point on the vessel is single skinned the risks
of escalation of the event are greater. If the steering gear is the
single skinned compartment the risks of total loss of control are greater.
In terms of the swiss
cheese risk assessment technique all of these items are "holes" in the
cheese.
What was the
recommendation? "ensure that both the platform and the vessel are fully
prepared to commence work and understand the operational constraints"!!!
If we are going to reduce
the risks of major accidents to support vessels we are going to have to get
real!
THE HISTORY OF THE
SUPPLY VESSEL
We now have a firm
delivery date for the "History of the Supply Vessel". It is our intent to
start formally taking orders and payments from week commencing 3rd December
and all orders received during that week will receive a signed copy. We have
to wait until we actually get a copy so that we can work out the postage
costs to the major countries of the world. Everyone who indicates an
intent to order by email will be contacted, once we have the postal charges
available, and it is our intent to use Paypal, and to provide access on the
publications page of the website.
There are more details
about the book if you have not already heard of it on the "Publications" page. |
