Neptune Energy has announced the start of its first ‘walk to work’ campaign at the Cygnus field in the North Sea.
Instead of helicopter transport, the Bibby Marine WaveMaster 1 vessel will be used to transport 50 workers aboard the normally unmanned Cygnus Bravo.
Neptune said the Walk to Work campaign will bring a range of benefits for the shutdown.
The use of the support vessel will remove the need for multiple helicopter flights to and from shore, cutting carbon emissions.
It also reduces time and costs while the modification, maintenance and inspection activities take place.
Neptune’s managing director for the UK, Alexandra Thomas, said: “Partnering with Bibby Marine on our first W2W campaign, we believe this approach could be very effective for the Cygnus field and provide significant efficiency and environmental benefits.
“This will enable us to consider alternative execution strategies for extended shutdowns, intensive fabric maintenance or inspection programmes in the future.”
The campaign also means that additional operations, which would otherwise have been scheduled separately, can also take place at Cygnus Bravo.
Bibby Marine’s commercial and client manager Mark Whitehead said: “We have been assisting Neptune Energy with their planning for this project for a number of months and are pleased we have now arrived at the platform and the project has commenced.
“Bibby WaveMaster 1 and her crew have extensive experience on campaigns like this, and the vessel itself is very capable of working in this sector of the North Sea across all seasons having completed over 10,000 gangway connections and transferred over 60,000 people.”
Neptune is operator of the Cygnus gas field in the Southern North Sea with a 38.75%, partnered with Spirit Energy (61.25%).