Offshore Engineer Reports
May 2001

and another thing ... Hypocrisy in bloom
It is spring and wild flowers and hypocrisy seem to be bursting out all over. Hypocrisy first bloomed hard on the heels of US President George Bush’s recent de facto scrapping of the Kyoto Accords by refusing to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant. European leaders were publicly apoplectic, shocked and dismayed at his total disregard for the future of the planet and their noble efforts to save it.

Balder re-enters J-lay arena
Sparked by a major award from BP, Heerema is currently halfway through a significant upgrade of its venerable crane vessel Balder. Adrian Cottrill reports on a programme which includes giving the unit serious pipelaying capabilities. He also looks at the five other vessels with J-lay capability: three already in service and two newbuilds due to begin work soon.

Brutus ‘hub’ heeds message from Mars
Shell sends its fifth tension leg platform into the Gulf o mexico this month. Hopes are high that Brutus will join the well productivity super-league but, as Rick von Flatern reports, the operator is adopting a softly, softly approach.

Multi-purpose Deep Blue gets its tower
Around three months from now, Coflexip Stena’s brand new flagship CSO Deep Blue will start its first commercial contract. That job will be to lay 178km of pipe, including reel-laying of 18in dia line in up to 1200m of water, at Kerr-McGee/Williams’ Boomvang/Nansen project in the US Gulf of Mexico.

Plenty more in the US pipeline
Pipelaying activity levels in the Gulf of Mexico – for trunklines, flowlines and umbilicals – are on a distinctly upward trend. Paul Hillegeist, president of Houston-based Quest Offshore Resources, crunches the numbers and sniffs the wind.

To build, or not to build
Building rigs on speculation has been something of a drilling industry taboo since the market collapse in the mid-1980s. But now, with new rig orders placed and spec building becoming a possibility again, the industry is wondering whether history maybe about to repeat itself. Marshall DeLuca consults two distinguished drilling industry oracles, Santa Fe International’s Stedman Garber and Global Marine’s Bob Rose, to get both sides of the issue.