North Sea activity is on a prolonged high, with many rigs booked through to the end of 2006. High-end support vessels are also in demand, prompting a long overdue overhaul of the European standby fleet.
One of the region’s leading contractors is Aberdeen-based North Star Shipping, the marine management division of Craig Group, which owns and operates 26 standby support vessels and two ROV survey boats.
Before the recent upturn, the company had held back from new investments. But it detected signs of a sea change two years ago, with the oil price stabilizing at around $30/bbl. Now the market has swung to the opposite extreme, with vessel allocation and scheduling increasingly tight.
According to Managing Director Callum Bruce, the maximum shelf life for a standby vessel is 30 years, and 19 of North Star’s fleet will be approaching retirement age over the next eight years. But there is a chronic lack of up-to-scratch, second-hand tonnage, ruling out replacement through acquisition.
In mid-2004 therefore, the board decided to commit to a long-term streamlining program, which began with the commissioning of four newbuild standby vessels from the Balenciaga shipyard in northern Spain.
Lately, North Star has taken up options for a further three new vessels from the same yard, all due to be delivered by July 2007. The first of the new emergency response and rescue boats, the Grampian Commander, should be completed this month, with the other six to follow at three-four monthly intervals. All are an identical design, formulated by IMT, a marine consultancy located down the coast in Montrose.
For North Star, the £40 m construction campaign represents its largest ever investment. “We are confident, however, that this is not a risk,” says Bruce, “because of the huge and growing demand for oil and gas worldwide. With the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico facing depletion, there has to be a sustained period of exploration and development activity just to maintain current production levels.”
The new IMT 948 vessels are 48.25 m long with an 11.8 m beam, accommodation for 16 crew members, and a dedicated deck for treating survivors rescued at sea. All are also equipped with the latest rescue technology. The main engine is a 2,100 HP medium-speed diesel, with controlled pitch propulsion, one 500 HP azimuthing thruster. All vessels will also be able to accommodate either two fast rescue craft, or one-two daughter craft.
The Grampian Commander is the first of seven new vessels Balenciaga is building for North Star in northern Spain.
According to Bruce, the IMT 948 is a flexible, cost-effective design incorporating a tried and tested hull shape, which will provide a stable platform for landing fast rescue/daughter craft and recovering people from the sea. Onboard search and rescue equipment is also well proven.
North Star operates periodically in the Mediterranean and off West Africa, but its main areas of operations are the UK central and northern North Sea, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Margin. Its main clients are Shell, BP, Talisman, CNR, Marathon, and Total. Last month, it was jointly awarded a five-year contract from Shell under which it will commit five of its vessels to the company’s northern UK North Sea installations.
Aside from evacuation, standby vessels in the North Sea also provide anti-collision surveillance, pollution monitoring and oil spill recovery, towage and tanker assistance. In the southern gas sector, some standby operators are aspiring to emulate the more sophisticated multi-role platform supply boats. They can do this, Bruce points out, because platforms in this region tend to be closer together, and nearer to the shore, so the vessels can be back in port within a few hours.
There is no such requirement currently in the harsher northern waters, although multi-role vessels may come into the picture.
“It’s possible,” he says, “that we ourselves may opt in future to commission bigger, more complex, multi-role, multi-field vessels in, depending on where the market leads.”•
