Swedish Consafe is back in business, but with a difference. Trading as Consafe MSV, the new company has placed an order with the Yantai Raffles yard in China for two semisubmersible heavy-lift rigs.
Consafe MSV’s two new multipurpose service vessels will offer a mid-range heavy-lift capacity to the offshore construction market.
Consafe MSV is owned by Consafe Invest. Three years ago Consafe Offshore - as it was then known - established a fleet of four accommodation rigs. With demand for offshore accommodation/construction support soaring, Prosafe, the leading player in the accommodation rig market, acquired shares in the company and eventually made a successful takeover bid.
What is different about the new Consafe is the emphasis on multipurpose service vessels, hence the acronym MSV. These will each be outfitted with two 1,250-ton (1,133 tonne) cranes, giving them a basic heavy-lift capability, with a tandem lift capacity of 2,500 tons (2,267 tonnes).
“The main purpose of this venture is that we want to get into heavy-lift,” says Consafe MSV chairman Hampus Ericsson “We think this is what is missing in the market.”
“A lot of medium size lifts are being done by the largest lift-vessels, and they charge an arm and a leg for it,” says CEO Sia Payani. There are currently few options between the top-of-the-range - and top-rate - tonnage like Heerema’s and Saipem’s big crane-barges and the modest, low-end barges with typically 50-120 tons (45.36-108.86 tonnes) capacity.
Market research by Consafe indicates that some 400 lifts of 100 tons (90.72 metric tons) or more have been performed annually in the offshore sector in water depths down to 1,000 ft (305 m) in recent times, and that number should increase to more than 600 annually in the coming years. The company’s new multipurpose vessels will have access to much of that market.
Moreover, working on a semisubmersible platform with high columns gives added advantage of an increased hook height compared with a monohull vessel. Consafe’s vessels will have a hook height of 82m (269 ft) over water level at maximum capacity, which significantly increases the area the cranes can work over. They will have no trouble placing loads on the deck of a fixed platform possibly 40-45m (131.23-147.63-ft) above the sea surface, which would be out of reach of vessels with a lower crane platform.
The Consafe MSV vessels also can adapt to other functions, notable pipelay and subsea well intervention. For this reason they have been designed with moonpools. In this extended period of high offshore activity, pipelay is another activity where demand often exceeds supply, imposing long lead-times on customers. Meanwhile the ever-growing number of subsea wells creates a strong requirement for cost-effective intervention capacity.
The vessels will also have accommodation capacity for 300. “It’s not a massive capacity,” says Payani. “There are many rigs out there in the market offering accommodation, but that’s not what we’re emphasizing. For us this is a work unit, with a large free deck area.” That area has been maximized by placing the accommodation block cantilevered over the starboard side, creating a free “space” measuring 80 m x 80 m (262.46 ft x 262.46 ft). The two cranes are located on the port side of the vessel.
The contract for the first two vessels was signed with Yantai Raffles in April. The order value is about $300 million excluding owner-furnished equipment - a good figure, according to Ericsson. The vessels will be certified by ABS. Construction is expected to start towards end-August, and the first vessel,SSCV Safe Challenger, should be delivered in January 2009. The second, yet to be named, will follow six months later. The design, which is new, was developed jointly by Consafe and Yantai Raffles, and there are Consafe people on the Yantai Raffles engineering team.
The two rigs will meet the requirements for working everywhere in the world except the Norwegian sector. The additional cost for compliance with Norwegian regulations was too large to be justified in terms of the size of the market, Payani says.
Safe Challenger will have a 12-point mooring system, enabling it to work in waters up to around 1,000 ft (305 m), but it will also be able to accommodate installation of a dynamic positioning system. The second vessel will be equipped with both conventional mooring and a DP3 system. Both vessels would normally be expected to operate in moored mode. DP comes into its own both in deeper waters, and in shallower waters when anchor-handling is considered to pose a risk to seabed equipment and pipelines in the vicinity.
When operational, each rig will require a crew of 30-150 depending on the assignment. Payani has no worries about recruiting suitably qualified people. “There’s good availability if you have the contacts, as we have,” he says.
There are no options for further vessels on the current contract with Yantai Raffles but the company’s ambitions go beyond the two units ordered so far. “We don’t want to stop with two,” says Payani.
For more information contact Sia Payani, Consafe MSV. Tel +46 31 759 5532, fax +46 31 759 5501, [email protected]
