Offshore staff
ABERDEEN, UK – Maritime Developments Ltd. (MDL) has completed work on a reeled installation for a subsea tieback in the North Sea.
The assignment included installation of three reels (9.2-12 m, or 30.2-39.3 ft, in diameter) of flowlines, jumpers and an umbilical, using the company’s third generation reel drive system (RDS).
To accommodate the larger diameter, MDL produced a set of 12-m cradles that could be integrated with the track and cradle system. The latter’s lashing points are designed for fastening reels to the tracks rather than welding multiple fixing points to the vessel deck, saving time and engineering costs, the company claimed.
Another benefit with the RDS design, MDL said, is that the HPU is built into one of the towers, which lessens the space occupied by the system on deck and the associated sea-fastening execution requirements.
In addition, the towers can engage with the smallest (9.2-m) reel and stroke to the largest 12-m reel without the need for any packers or further mobilization. For this project the RDS had already been mobilized on the vessel, as the tieback job was a follow-up to a multi-project campaign.
Dave Gardiner, MDL vice president UK & Europe, said: “By keeping the RDS and track system on board in between projects, we reduced the design and engineering workloads pre-mission and optimized the mobilization times for the equipment and product across the campaign to date.”
08/12/2020
