Ardent, the premier marine salvage, emergency response and decommissioning contractor, has completed the design of an external buoyancy system called Archimedes, to recover jackets.
An invited audience of operators, regulators, yards and trade associations attended the launch in the Oil and Gas Museum in Aberdeen on October 11.
A webinar and round of presentations internationally will now follow.
The Archimedes design project was supported by the Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) and follows the ground-breaking par-buckling and refloating of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner undertaken off the coast of Italy, by Ardent.
The skills and knowledge gained by Ardent’s personnel in that successful operation, centred also on bespoke external buoyancy application, came to the fore in this design.
Archimedes brings significant cost savings over current benchmarks for recovery of jackets based on HLV deployment.
Optimising the low draught featured within this design, the Ardent system allows delivery and offload at any suitable quayside facility without recourse to dredging and intermediate barge transfer. This permits cost reduction and reduces operational risk.
Richard van der Tuin, senior commercial manager at Ardent, oversaw the project. He said: “We have delivered a concept-system that is designed to the optimal jacket weight based on multiple criteria including jacket numbers, water depth and weight range, particularly for the North Sea. Archimedes can be further adjusted for jacket specific or environment specific conditions. It has been a thorough process to produce the functionality, modularity and cost competitiveness of the system. Aiding Ardent in the process have been a number of independent third parties and our supply chain stakeholders. The regulators were also actively engaged to inform our designs. A special mention must go to the OGTC who have been very supportive in every way in getting to this point of market readiness”.
Underlining these sentiments, Stuart Martin, sales and marketing director, said: “We feel this system development has been like pushing against an open door in that the operators and the regulators want decom cost reduction. The dismantling yards have asked for a delivery mechanism which does not require quayside re-modelling and deep-water dredging. Our system ticks these boxes and more; re-use as a key example. It’s my job to develop the expressions of interest we have and more importantly to convert the proposals we have made with the system into contracts secured.”
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