Early birds break the ice
  from: Offshore Engineer
  by: David Morgan
  Friday, September 05, 2008

Preparation, preparation, preparation . . . That’s the business mantra of canny offshore contractors and suppliers looking to succeed in the inhospitable but highly prospective Arctic regions now yielding to hydrocarbons exploration and development. David Morgan reviews the exploits of one intrepid Dutch contractor.

Among the early pioneers in the Russian Arctic, already with two years’ experience in the Barents Sea under its belt and now heading into the even more remote reaches of the Kara Sea, is the Netherlands-based Boskalis Offshore.

The company first ventured into the region in the summer of 2006 at the behest of Russian pipelay contractor MRTS (Mezhregion Truboprovodstroy). Working only in the months when this part of the eastern Barents is not ice-bound – roughly July to November – Boskalis was tasked with the trenching and backfilling work associated with two 36in pipelines MRTS vessel Defender was preparing to install from shore to Lukoil’s new Varandey offshore oil export tanker-loading terminal.

Separate trenches were required for each of the 22km-long pipelines. Using one of its bigger vessels, the 16,000m³ capacity trailing suction hopper dredger Oranje, the Boskalis team under project manager Bert Vogelezang worked for as long as ice conditions would allow in 2006 before returning to Varandey to backfill the trenches in the summer of 2007.

The learning curve, both for company and crew, has been a steep one, admits Vogelezang.

‘We learned a lot in our first season there, thanks also to the early onset of winter that year!’ he says. ‘At that time we just didn’t know what to expect. When the outside temperature drops to –20°C but the sea is still 1°C or 2°C, you can have problems with the technical part of the vessel because ice is forming very fast.

‘But we were better prepared for 2007, which was more relaxed weather-wise, and we are confident that this year will be better still now we also have all the incoming lines with ice charts, weather forecasts, you name it.’

‘Very good preparation is essential in this part of the world – you have to have everything before you go,’ he adds.

‘There is a lot of paperwork of course, and in an area of strategic importance like this it can take months just to get all the approvals in place from the authorities in the area. It’s a big challenge to get everything in order, in place, in time, with the right people, visas, equipment etc.’

With nowhere to work onshore, and the nearest port 1200km away, what Boskalis could carry on the Oranje provided effectively their only means of living and working, taking self-sufficiency to a new level. Everything had to be done offshore, including all pre- and post-survey work. Food storage facilities needed to be sufficient for many months.

And ensuring adequate resupply of fuel of suitable quality and in sufficient quantities – the Oranje uses some 1200m³ of fuel every three weeks – was another challenge, requiring the charter of a separate vessel pretty well just for that purpose.

The new Varandey terminal represents a $4 billion investment by Lukoil and coventurer ConocoPhillips. The first tanker – one of the new breed of ice-class vessels capable of negotiating ice up to 6m thick – sailed from the terminal loaded with Timan-Pechora oil in June this year, heading for the Canadian port of Come By Chance.

Last month, the Oranje returned to Varandey to finalise a few things before heading to the Kara Sea to confront an even more daunting set of environmental and operational challenges.

Boskalis’ next subcontract for MRTS takes it to the natural gas fields of the desolate Yamal peninsula, more specifically to Baydaratskaya Bay. Consisting mainly of marsh land, this coastal region is notorious not just for its severe winter ice but also its unpredictable winds and frequent floods in the so-called summer. Like Varandey, water depths in this area are around 20m.

Here, for the next few years at least, the Oranje’s working window is likely to last 90 days at best as it trenches two 48in, 70kmlong pipelines to be installed for Gazprom by the Defender, which was recently upgraded to handle the heavier pipe. The pipelines are strategically important since they will ultimately form part of the Nord Stream trunkline, feeding Yamal gas across the Urals to St Petersburg and then on through the Baltic to Greifswald in Germany. There are also options for further pipelines to be added as the regional infrastructure develops around major field developments such as Bovanenkovskoe and Kharasaveyskoe.

Around mid-July each year, the Oranje will accompany the pipelay barge and other vessels in convoy with an icebreaker to location, then come out again in October and return for more trenching the following year.

‘The ice conditions in this area are more challenging and this is going to be a very interesting project,’ says Vogelezang. ‘Everything must be ready. You can’t lose a day. Northern Siberia is a very strange place, with huge fluctuations in temperature. You never know quite how long the season will last, so we will try to do as much trenching as possible while there.

‘We’re moving into a completely new area of course so we still have some questions hanging over what the exact circumstances there will be – for example, what the soil and environmental conditions will be like – but we are ready to deal with the challenges as we go along.’

As was the case at Varandey, an environmental expert will be on board to measure the environmental conditions in the area. The Oranje normally has a crew of 25 but this specialist function along with client representatives, surveyors, insurers and members of the project team will bring the number of personnel on board to somewhere between 35 and 38. ‘Basically, it’s going to be a very crowded place for the next three months,’ predicts Vogelezang wryly.

Boskalis Offshore regional manager Arie Smits sees much bigger potential opportunities arising for the company in the Russian Arctic, both in the oil & gas sector and on the reclamation and civil engineering side, now it has an early foot in the door.

‘As a company of course you want to be the first there to get your position,’ he says. ‘The Oranje is probably also the first foreign-flagged vessel going in that area. The amount of work planned in that region is enormous. The pipelines are now going to Europe but in future there will also be lines heading east to China and elsewhere.’

As a measure of how things are now developing in the region, Smits points to the impressive strides already made by the Russians, against all the environmental odds, to create some form of local infrastructure where previously there was none.

When Boskalis first arrived at Varandey, there were probably only 150-200 people in what passed for the local camp. There are now already 3500 people living there and once the refinery and storage tanks are completed this figure is expected to rise beyond 5000. Ultimately, similar population numbers are anticipated at the Yamal peninsula site, where today around 80 people occupy facilities built from scratch last winter using materials and equipment brought in entirely by ice roads. Huge apartment blocks are now under construction at the town of Nar Yan-Mar in northern Russia to establish it as a regional oil and gas field operations and service base perhaps some day on a par with Aberdeen and Stavanger.

‘What they are doing there is quite remarkable,’ observes Smits. ‘We as a company take the Arctic very, very seriously and are doing a lot of in-house studies to get us fully prepared for working in this totally different new frontier. A lot of things are going to happen there, but there is not much knowledge of the area yet, so we are building up our experience year by year.’ OE

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