There is a resurgence of diving in the North Sea, not just because of a revival of interest in their use by the oil&gas industry, but renewables, too.
And it is North Sea oil&gas that lies behind Subsea 7’s investment in the 144m DSV (dive support vessel), Seven Atlantic, which paid a courtesy visit to Aberdeen in March and which has increased the company’s dive capability by some 20%.
“In our case, the vessel has been built largely off the back of the Shell UAC contract,” said Steph McNeill, UK region VP for the company.
“We perceive there is a long-term demand for diving.”
This covers from new projects through inspection, repair and maintenance through to decommissioning. And then there is the new opportunity – offshore renewables.
“For us, it (Seven Atlantic) demonstrates a commitment to diving in the North Sea. We’ve built a vessel that will probably have a 30 to 35-year life span, which is what we think we need.”
He agreed that, just a few years ago, there seemed to be pressure to eliminate diving from the North Sea, but that appeared to be mostly driven by Statoil rather than UK operators.
“In the UK, we’ve always seen a need for both (divers and remote intervention technologies), but diving will always be a big part of the solution.”
Alan Forsyth, HSE director, said that there had been “quite a U-turn” by Statoil.
“But then there was re-engagement and discussion about the concerns that they had regarding the long-term health of divers. And now they’re moving forward with deep diving again in Norway.”
On renewables, Forsyth said the company had seen the need for diving capability quite some time ago and that this represented the start of a whole new and intensive market for divers. He agreed that this sector’s ramping demands could put pressure on the ability of the dive sector as currently configured to service its oil&gas clientele.
“We’re engaged in renewables in a small way at the moment. We’ve carried out some work using a combination of diving and diverless resource. There is a growth opportunity there.”
McNeill said Subsea 7 had raised its dive-based capacity lately as a result of the new ship and had not done any trimming in the past five years.
“At the moment, we’re working with a pool of about 270 divers, of which we’re closely engaged with about 160. Most are saturation divers.
“We’ve got very few air divers in the pool and we bring them in as needed.”
McNeill said there was sufficient fresh blood coming into offshore diving for now, but that saturation courses in the UK and at the facility in Marseilles were running at capacity.
“There has been quite an investment at Fort William to be able to meet the needs of operators over the next few years, and there’s another Norwegian state diving school that is being heavily subsidised by the operators across there. It’s in Bergen.”
Forsyth pointed out that divers and the technologies they use are intrinsically linked and that they had played a linchpin role in the design, construction and commissioning of the 24-person sat dive suite on Seven Atlantic.
“We involved the divers heavily in the build of the vessel and the systems. They go in the chambers; it’s their lives that are on the line and they need to be happy with the systems.
“It’s interesting that it was our divers who were heavily involved in the commissioning process. They did the final testing of the systems.
“The divers who did the commissioning are the same one who went on the first test dives.
“It would have been foolish of us to move the technology ahead without involving the divers.”
