Hornbeck Offshore Services moved into Port Fourchon in early 2006 to establish a service base for its newbuild multi-purpose supply vessels (MPSVs), and named it - HOS Port. Two of the vessels in the program are scheduled to be delivered this year from Portland, Oregon. The vessels will be used for a number of activities, including deepwater well tests, says Carl Annessa, Hornbeck Offshore executive vice president and COO.
Well tests
Operators are looking for a more efficient and accurate means of conducting deepwater well tests, says Annessa.
“The traditional style was to flare the product from a highly choked well and extrapolate the pressure. This reading was used to estimate flow characteristics at a different orifice. And they made a lot of investment decisions based on that,” Annessa explains.
“What they found was the natural recovery rates on some of their deepwater fields were much lower than anticipated,” he says. “Now, oil companies are being very careful in understanding how a well will flow. To do this, you have to conduct an extended well test at higher flow rates. You can’t flare.”
The latest deepwater well test technique is done through discharging the oil into barges. “Operators have done this in the past, but on a smaller scale,” says Annessa. “This is new for deepwater.”
One of the company’s plans with its new MPSVs is to use them for deepwater well tests. “We can move one of the vessels to the well site, dynamically position it with no mooring lines, attach a floating hose to the rig, and away we go,” he says.
HOS Port provided one of the tank barges used in Chevron’s Jack and Tahiti well tests in the Gulf of Mexico.
The company recently bought two sulfur tankers from Freeport McMoran to convert into MPSVs. They will be 114 m x 72 m (373 ft x 72 ft), 8,500-dwt, DP2 tankers with a supply boat pedigree, equipped with storage capacity for 30,000 bbl of oil, 32,000 bbl of mud, and 30,000 bbl of water. Each main deck will be 73 m x 18 m (240 ft x 58 ft).
HOS has an option to insert a mid-ship moonpool for umbilical and small pipeline installation on one of the vessels.
“We envision one of these vessels being a super-supply vessel, and the other will be more of a construction/support barge,” Annessa says. “We think we can capture most of the value from these vessels in the spot market.”
One advantage of these 10,000-hp vessels, says Annessa, will be their ability to operate in up to 3 knots current in the Gulf of Mexico. Another unique characteristic of these US-flagged vessels is their triple certification for supply, construction, and tanker capacity. They will also be certified to work outside the US, Annessa says.
Service center
The other major part of HOS Port’s strategy at Fourchon is to have a service depot for its marine fleet.
The company has invested about $2 million in the facility since it was acquired from ASCO in 2006.
“We’ve improved service turnaround time for a boat from 12 to 2 hours,” Annessa says. “At the end of the day, from a logistics standpoint, it’s all about throughput.”
A vessel coming into dock can also get fuel and water, and in the future - tank cleaning service.
“Clients for a long time used docks as a necessary evil for their operation,” Annessa says. “They’re starting to understand that there’s a lot of value that could be generated for them with an efficient operation.”
HOS Port sits on 23 acres and 610 linear meters (2,000 ft) of land.
HOS Port, covering about 23 acres and 610 linear meters (2,000 ft), serves as base for 20 vessels working in the GoM.
