Piling in the deeps
  from: Asian Oil & Gas
  Thursday, August 24, 2006

The rental fleet of IHC Handling Systems continues to expand, with global deepwater demand for the company's specialist pile handling systems on projects like Kikeh forcing the pace.

Deepwater versions of the company's standard internal lifting tool (ILT) have been around for a few years, the largest of them - of 1000t capacity - finding its first application in 2003 during installation of six 84in tension leg platform piles for ExxonMobil's Kizomba A development in 1500m of water off Angola. That crane wire-based system, operated by ROV powered by hydraulic energy stored in the tool housing and using a combination of accumulators, was sold to Stolt (now Acergy), as was a deepwater ILT operated for Heerema in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now two other similar units with a lifting capacity of 1200t have gone into service on rental terms for Technip at the 1300m water depth location of Murphy's combined FPSO/spar development offshore Malaysia.

Two members of the IHC Handling Systems team were on site in July helping Technip with the piling work as AOG went to press. Assisted by the deepwater ILT package, Kikeh's fourteen 84in diameter piles are being upended by the two cranes of the Jumbo Javelin. Once in the vertical position, the load is transferred to an anchor handling tug and the pile taken to the seabed via a big deepwater winch. The Rockwater 2 has been deployed for the pile driving, using underwater hammers. IHC also supplied the hydraulic shackles for Kikeh's anchor pile mudmats.

According to IHC Handling Systems' Marc Doorduin, fitting the deepwater package to the company's standard ILT will enable it to operate in water depths greater than 2000m. 'We're covering the whole range with the current expansion of our ILT rental fleet,' he says. 'Adding two extra 60-96in tools with lifting capacities up to 1200t will enable us to have four such units available for rental, based either in Singapore or the Netherlands. We also now have four extra tools in the 24-42in range with 250t capacity, and three 42-60in units offering 500t capacity.'

In another major investment, IHC is also building a second 3000t capacity subsea levelling tool, having learned from recent experience on the CNOOC Panyu 30-1 project in the South China Sea that transporting this 65t, 5m high, 3m diameter unit to remote locations is no easy matter. Now it will have two such systems available for the rental market, one of them stationed permanently in Asia, initially in China where there is a great deal of jacket installation work coming up. The second unit underwent final load testing at IHC's Delfgauw facility in July and was due to get its first offshore outing with Heerema in the UK North Sea in August. AOG

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