Offshore

• September 08, 2010
• Oil & Gas

Damen books order for first Twin Axe Catamaran

More than a year in development, the Twin Axe HSSV design is a further development of Damen’s successful Sea Axe concept and the HSSV 2610 is particularly suited for offshore wind industry support.

Martijn Smit, Damen Sales Manager for Europe, says: “Given the tremendous potential growth in the offshore wind industry there is a great need for vessels to access turbines and this can often be in constraining weather conditions. We were driven to find a concept that improves on conventional catamaran designs.”

Managing Director of Marineco UK, Mike Conafray, adds: “As a company we have been monitoring the current vessels available that service the offshore wind farms but we never felt comfortable joining in with the existing vessels. When Damen came along to us with their proposals we quickly realized that by introducing them we would be able to offer the market a much enhanced vessel that would suit most of its needs.”

The Damen HSSV 2610 has been undergoing thorough testing at Delft University in the Netherlands.

“There have been ‘stunning’ results in the vessel’s seakeeping behavior, resistance and at the same time, it has much lower fuel consumption,” Mr. Smit says, adding that the design is an extension of the Damen enlarged ship concept.

“The raised work deck and sea axe bows enable the vessel to keep up its speed in a higher sea state and that is crucial for the offshore industry. And as many of the wind turbines will be located in challenging seas, this greatly extends the operating window.”

The new vessel has dimensions of 26 m x 10 m. It has accommodations for four crew and can transport 12 passengers.

Features include a 20 tm deck crane, a spacious diving platform, HP cleaning unit and extra mooring winches.

The vessel is thus suited for a diverse range of activities for supporting and supplying the offshore wind industry, as well as the wider offshore sector. Ample working and storage space on deck make it suitable for a variety of cargoes, including containers.

With a fuel capacity of 12,000 liters, t can be used tio transfer fuel to wind turbines.

Classed by Bureau Veritas, the vessel operates under the Workboat Code, Category 1.

Depending on the sea state, the maximum speed will be 26 knots with a range of 640 nm.

Currently under construction at Damen Gorinchem in the Netherlands, the vessel is expected to be ready by June 2011.

• September 08, 2010
• Oil & Gas

Deepwater Horizon: Lessons learned

Other causes identified by Mr. Maitland in a speech prepared for delivery at today’s Global Maritime Environmental Congress 2010 in Hamburg, Germany. include “Bean-counteritis” — a failure to examine constraints on risk management budgets— and collectivism — a conviction that existing company policy is, by definition, the best that could possibly be.

Most significant, he says, is the failure to establish a risk control or safety awareness mindset at all levels of the corporate hierarchy, particularly at middle-management levels, and to effectively offset a “get it done, at the lowest possible cost” attitude at the “coalface.”

What needs to be done to prevent another disaster?

There are generally acknowledged to be three material stages in protection from oil spills: Prevention, Response and Remediation.

Mr. Maitland recommends particular attention to the following steps.

The need to match cost awareness and risk awareness. The one must not become the enemy of the other.

Prevention: implementing a successful risk assessment and management scheme for the oil industry, and indeed the shipping industry as a whole. Including in this process, an effective third-party audit system that goes “BP”, that is, “beyond paper”.

Ensuring that risk management programs, exemplified by the ISO System and the ISM Code, are not subject to unreasonable “starvation” by corporate budgetary controllers.

Funding an adequate engineering and scientific platform before, and not during or after, the disaster takes place.

Requiring that government agencies have the adequate fiscal and material resources to conduct remediation, after the spill has taken place.

Emphasizing the need for community involvement and understanding during “peacetime,” that is, before an incident occurs.

Cooperate with organized environmental advocacy groups, scientific and technical experts and other public and not-for-profit organisations to develop successful collaborative practices, drills, informational and problem-solving models.

NAMEPA, says Mr. Maitland, is concerned about these “lessons learned.”

The management of risk, in terms of oil spill prevention, means among other things that the right measures be taken to avoid disaster in the first place. Prevention and remediation go hand in hand. Planning therefore begins before the spill, to avoid it and to have a seamless response process in place.

What was done after April 20, why and how the process worked, and what needs rethinking, will be studied and debated for some years to come. It is clear that a more enforceable system of assessment and management of risk factors is needed.

There is no understandable reason—except cost cutting – for BP to have incurred $40 billion or more in liabilities; or for there to have been loss of life; or serious damage to several major industries, from petroleum to shellfish; or vast environmental harm; or the possible destruction of a company with hundreds of thousands of investors and eighty thousand employees; — except for its failure to embed an effective safety management system, when and where it mattered.

“But bean-counters seldom have remorse; quality, safety and risk management will often have no place in a corporate budget unless the law compels otherwise, and imposes severe penalties for noncompliance,” says Mr. Maitland.

You can read his complete paper HERE

And if you want to hear Mr. Maitland’s thoughts on what future regulations will look like after the Deepwater Horizon incident, he’ll be adressing that topic in a September 24 luncheon address at Marine Log’s Global Greenship conference in Washington, DC, when he will be speaking in his capacity of Managing Partner, International Registries, Inc