Service Jack of all trades
  from: Offshore Engineer
  by: Darius Snieckus
  Tuesday, April 29, 2008

When the North Sea market for a DP semisubmersible capable of single-lift topsides removal of up to 20,000t failed to catch light as quickly as hoped, Master Marine regrouped and set to work on a more versatile concept. As construction of a pair of ‘all-in-one’ Service Jack construction jackups gets under way for the company in Indonesia, Darius Snieckus speaks with managing director Per Johannson.

It has been a long road for Master Marine, but already clearly worth the journey. In 1997, founder and managing director Per Johansson began developing a dynamically positioned heavylift semisubmersible, dubbed ‘Master Mind’, to vie for a slice of the European offshore decommissioning market then forecast to be just over the horizon (OE April 1999). Ten years on, a pair of self-propelling ‘Service Jack’ construction jackups, the company’s response to shifting market forces – not least a steadily climbing crude price that has kept ‘full scale’ North Sea decom simmering on the back burner, had their steel cutting ceremonies last November at Drydocks World’s Batam yard in Indonesia, with delivery slated for 2010 and options for two more.

Where Master Mind was designed to singlehandedly remove entire topsides weighing as much as 20,000t in open sea and sail them to shore for dismantling, cutting out the costly business of moduleby- module disassembly by crane barge and a flotilla of support vessels, the Service Jack’s offering is much broader. For the four-legged jackup unit is envisioned not only carrying out offshore installation or removal with a capacity to skid payloads as heavy as 7200t and/or tandem lift up to 1500t, but also taking on assignments in platform maintenance and modification, subsea construction as well as handling ‘all phase’ decom services including well plugging and abandonment.

‘We reached a point with Master Mind where though we had solved every technology problem presented by the design. But the technical complexity – related largely to redundancy systems for horizontal positioning needed for safety during load transfer – and the associated cost left us thinking there must be a better way to do this,’ states Johansson. ‘And of course the decommissioning market didn’t develop as expected due to fact that the high oil prices made oil companies want to extend the life of fields, not decommission them.’

‘So in 2003 we started to look at the idea of a large-scale lift boat, and the more we looked at it the more we realised that a jackup could answer all the demands linked to vertical and horizontal motion during topsides installation and removal, and could do it more cost-effectively than a floater,’ he continues.

Having sketched out a new design concept in-house, ‘including everything from cost estimates and strength analysis’, Master Marine approached Semar (now part of DOF Subsea Norway), Londonbased consultancy Global Maritime and the Dutch firm GustoMSC to work up the detailed engineering. Built on four 130m legs set into 180m² spud cans, the resulting jackup will have a hull measuring 111.8m in length and 50m in width, affording a 2500m² deck area that will be outfitted with a 7200t skidding system, a pair of 750t Huisman cranes, and living quarters for 260. Self-propelled by five 2.5MW and one 1.7MW Schottel thrusters, the Service Jack will have a draught of 5.9m in transit and 7.4m when loaded, with ‘stationkeeping’ courtesy of a DP2 positioning system, supplied by ABB/Kongsberg.

Although decommissioning services are seen as ‘still interesting’, Master Marine is now concentrating on transportation, installation and hook-up of platform structures, platform modification and maintenance, and subsea installation services. To this end, Infield Systems was employed to investigate the market potential in offshore oil and gas field development – ‘by weight, type, water depth and geographical area’. What came out of this collaboration has helped Master Marine chart a new course.

‘Results from this research have been used for dimensioning of the Service Jack units and as an input in the marketing plan of the company,’ remarks Johansson. ‘Everyone is talking about deepwater developments, which admittedly are technically challenging and “sexier” than standard jacket and topsides developments in shallow water,’ he offers, ‘but if you look at the total number of platforms to be installed worldwide, the majority are still shallow water fixed platforms – and more than 85% of these fixed platforms will have topsides weighing 7000t or less and about 90% are in water depths of 90m or less. So the Service Jack is targeting this market. If you look at the drill rig market, the majority of new drilling rigs under construction are jackups. So where they are able to drill, we will be able to install offshore oil and gas infrastructure.’

Loadout to hookup

The Service Jack also aims to satisfy two further market demands: ‘weather independence’ and streamlined, low-interface logistics. ‘From our further studies into the installation market we found that waiting on weather continues to be one of the main problems faced offshore, with one project we came across being delayed by five weeks because of bad weather,’ recounts Johansson. ‘Also because most projects depend on a large number of contractors, if one link in the chain is missing, everything grinds to a halt. So this factored into our thinking with the Service Jack too, insofar as it is not a weather-sensitive concept and can also provide an all-in-one service from loadout to hookup.’

Safety is seen by Master Marine as one of the hidden benefits of the Service Jack. Because it can do the work of a fleet of barges, anchor handling tugs, crane units, support vessels, and flotels, offshore manhours and personnel transfer are greatly reduced, as is the likelihood of operational accidents such as in-field collisions.With dynamic motion – roll, pitch and heave – eliminated when the jackup is in ‘elevated mode’, the installation crew has a stable platform from which to work and safe access by gangway to the platform structures. And, as the Service Jack can serve as both an installation and removal unit, its operations are fully reversible with no ‘point of no return’.

‘These jackups provide a safer, environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternative for load out, transportation, offshore installation and hook-up of platform structures,’ states Johansson. ‘The only restrictions we can see come about with water depth, punch-through [when a jackup leg breaks through a soft layer of soil on the seabed], and lifting capacity. But we feel even with these limitations we still have a large market niche to fill.’

As ‘add-ons’, Master Marine plans to market the Service Jacks for subsea field development jobs – ‘particularly the larger subsea structures now being used in developments, those weighing 200t and up’ – and maintenance and modification.

Budgeted to together cost NKr3.15 billion all-in, the two flagship Service Jacks being built at the Batam yard would appear to have a regional advantage in swiftly starting to earn their keep given the mushrooming market for platform installation in Southeast Asia. By dint of the large number of oil and gas finds in the region that lie in water depths of less than 130m, fixed installations continue to find favour among area operators, with some 160 platforms in the works, 35 under construction and more than 120 in the planning phase.

‘Building the jackups in Indonesia means we will be able to mobilise directly from the yard to a first operation,’ remarks Johansson. ‘Southeast Asia is the growing market when it comes to new platforms. We have been in contact with various operators in the region, including [Malaysian state oil company] Petronas. The fixed platform installation market is proving to be a very interesting one.’

Worldwide too, Master Marine feels there is a great deal of blue sky for its Service Jack concept, as the oil and gas industry grapples with capacity constraints in the offshore construction fleet. ‘When it comes to total lifting capacity, there are only around 30 offshore construction vessels with lifting capacity of 1600t or more,’ he notes. ‘And the average age of these vessels is 29 years – though the design age of most of these units is 25 years.

‘The number of development projects is on the rise and the average weight of the topsides being installed is dropping. And on top of this you do still have the decommissioning market which is still coming. Ideally, to start, we would like to have one Service Jack in Southeast Asia, one in Europe, one in the US Gulf, and one in the Middle East.’

With NKr1.2 billion in equity raised through international and Norwegian investment groups, construction at Batam running on time and on budget, and discussions under way following ‘a first enquiry’ from an operator, all looks to be finally coming together for Master Marine after more than a decade of development work. Johansson is understandably keen to get the Service Jacks working in anger. The first two are scheduled for completion in the first and second quarters of 2010.

‘We have had quite a few ups-and-downs along the way, but it is good fun and now we are back on track.With the installation market the way it is right now, I would only love to have the first two Service Jacks being delivered today,’ he smiles. OE

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