Flocking to bigger birds
  from: Offshore Engineer
  by: Stephanie Johnson
  Thursday, April 03, 2008

As exploration and production activity moves further out in the Gulf of Mexico, more medium and large helicopters are needed to access remote platforms. With both choppers and pilots in short supply and manufacturers maxed-out, 2008 could prove a dicey one for oil producers facing possible ride-sharing and a scramble to book flights. Stephanie Johnson reports.

Helicopters took off and landed 1.25 million times in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006, ferrying some 2.76 million workers to offshore destinations. Of those flights, reports the Helicopter Safety Advisory Conference (HSAC), medium twin helicopters flew 153,822 trips and heavy twins flew 32,059 trips.

These numbers are expected to rise as larger choppers become the new workhorses of the Gulf, where the focus has shifted from shallow water operations to deepwater facilities some 200 miles offshore. Some companies, such as BP and Shell, only fly big helicopters, and there aren’t enough of those to go around.

Michael Suldo, chairman of the board for Helicopter Association International and senior vice president, western hemisphere, for helicopter transportation services provider Bristow Group, says demand for medium and large choppers is getting ‘tighter and tighter.’

Most helicopter manufacturers are sold out of larger helicopters for the next two years.

‘The Gulf of Mexico is as busy as it’s ever been, especially in large helicopters,’ Suldo says.

Bristow, like other companies, moves helicopters to different geographic locations to keep up with demand.

‘When I have two to three different oil companies asking for helicopters in the future, it’s almost first-come, first-serve. Small ships I can get, but the price for them has increased by 25% to 30% over the last year. There will always be a static need for them but, as (deepwater) offshore continues to develop, we have many large multinationals coming in, and demand is just getting tighter and tighter.’

On 11 January, Bristow announced the $143-million acquisition of eight new aircraft, exercising options to acquire two S-92 and three S-76C++ helicopters from United Technologies subsidiary Sikorsky and three EC225 helicopters from Eurocopter, a division of EADS. Bristow is maintaining multi-year options to purchase additional aircraft from Sikorsky and Eurocopter as market conditions require.

The S-92 and EC225 aircraft are larger helicopters capable of flying longer distances to serve oil and gas facilities in remote offshore locations. The S-76C++ helicopters are medium-size aircraft that provide versatility in terms of distance, passenger capacity and markets in which they can operate. Bristow expects to take delivery of all eight aircraft by the end of calendar year 2009 and deploy them both domestically and internationally.

Safety demands

Short supply isn’t the only issue. Suldo says flight companies also must respond to demands for higher safety standards that Big Oil is pushing for on ‘copters that ferry employees. He says the industry in general tries to anticipate what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could mandate to avoid having standards legislated.

‘We want to do the right thing without the government being involved,’ he says. ‘We’re spending lots of money and lots of time trying to figure out what the best practices are and then implementing them.’

Suldo summarized safety measures introduced to helicopters.

All aircraft now have moving GPS maps that show pilots where they are and where they’re going.

Terminal Collision Avoidance Systems tell pilots where other helicopters are flying.

Satellite flight following and second VHF radios allow pilots to talk to others while remaining on flight-following frequencies. One-third of all choppers flying in the Gulf either have or are being retrofitted with satellite phones. Over the last five years, life rafts have been installed externally on either side of helicopters so passengers don’t have to worry about getting a raft out of a helicopter in the event of a water-landing. And, medium and larger choppers have more power for better performance.

According to a 2004 policy statement posted on the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Transportation Trades website, safety concerns include insufficient air traffic infrastructure; insufficient facilities and equipment to support visual flight rules and instrument flight rules; and the need for better communications, surveillance and weather observation equipment.

‘More astounding,’ the statement continues, ‘is the limited search and rescue capability that currently exists in the Gulf. Helicopters are getting larger, faster and going out farther offshore, leaving pilots and passengers extremely vulnerable in the tragic event of an accident. Coast Guard helicopters currently in use are restricted in range and payload.’

That policy statement preceded by two weeks a Gulf of Mexico helicopter crash that killed eight oilfield personnel and two pilots.

Following its research into the accident, the US National Transportation Safety Board called on the Federal Aviation Administration to require all US-registered turbine-powered helicopters that carry six or more passengers to be equipped with a terrain awareness and warning system. The recommendation is one of five contained in the final report of a fatal helicopter accident in the Gulf of Mexico.

‘It’s called Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System,’ Suldo says. ‘This is standard in all of the Bristow Group’s newer large and medium helicopters.’

Major oil companies have their own safety standards. The Professional Helicopter Pilots Association’s Al Duquette, safety officer for the group, says pilots once called the shots on safety. Now Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and others all have weighed in on safety, and their maintenance and pilot standards, for example, are higher than the FAA requires.

Oil companies also weigh in on other safety factors, such as weather. Before a pilot takes off, his/her opinion, the helicopter company’s opinion, and the company chartering the craft all evaluate whether to fly or abort, he says.

Some of these companies, he adds, also think FAA-mandated 14-hour duty times are too long. Suldo says actual flight duty times are eight hours for a single pilot helicopter and 10 hours of flight time for a dual-pilot helicopter.

Timing is of the essence when crews are shuttling 200 miles out. ‘Oil companies want to make each flight more productive, to have them full, and as a result tend to be more organized,’ he says. ‘When you are real close (to the beach), it doesn’t take very long and you make flights that are not full, so you’re liable to make more trips in and out to get jobs done.’

People shortage

Another issue could limit deepwater helicopter flights in 2008: a shortage of qualified helicopter pilots.

‘It is an increasing problem, the shortage of qualified pilots and mechanics,’ Suldo says. The two-day European Helicopter Operators Conference in 2006 in Rome focused on the shortage of qualified pilots and engineers.

Duquette is a Vietnam veteran who’s flown helicopters for 43 years. He says a dearth of qualified pilots is a major problem for the industry. While not questioning the credentials of newer pilots because ‘I used to be there myself,’ he describes green pilots as ‘our future’ – but just that.

‘Do you want someone right out of school to fly your multimillion-dollar aircraft and your passengers all the way out there?’ he asks. ‘The industry needs to somehow figure out how to get pilots from where they are to where they need to be in order to handle the larger, more complicated, more complex aircraft.’

He describes inexperienced pilots as those with 1000 hours or less of flight time. Pilots with experience in other industries, such as firefighting, soon find their skills don’t quite translate into Gulf of Mexico experience.

‘Landing on a rig is different than slingloading logs or doing firefighting with a bucket. All have special needs and techniques,’ he says.

Duquette piloted the first $26 million Sikorsky to land on BP’s Thunder Horse platform after it was towed into the Gulf of Mexico. Larger helicopters come with ‘all the bells and whistles,’ including a five-ton air conditioner, he says. Their range is 188 nautical or 200 statute miles, ‘near the edge of our fuel capabilities.’

Duquette says offshore engineers probably don’t realize part of the problem facing chopper pilots in the deepwater Gulf is that few platforms are designed to handle larger aircraft. Platforms such as Thunder Horse, which meet international standards, do.

‘I need at least a 60ft square, and that’s bare minimum,’ he says. ‘We’ve got 5000 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and there’s probably a dozen I can land on as far as production platforms, and the rest I can land on are drilling rigs that come in from overseas and meet international standards.’

The industry is paying the price for old attitudes that Gulf operators prided themselves on, when everyone boasted that things were different in the Gulf. ‘For many years, we didn’t go out very far. Now that we’re going out deep, it’s coming back to bite us because the infrastructure’s not there, the size of the helicopters is not there.’

Duquette, who works for a major helicopter company and flies for a major oil company, describes infrastructure as fuel, communications and search-andrescue. OE

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