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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat
    Mendip's Avatar
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    Random offshore pics

    While looking for other stuff I've come across a multitude of pictures from offshore work over the past years. Unfortunately I was late to get a digital camera so have no pics before 2004, but there's still 15 years worth to bore everyone with.

    Maybe of interest, probably not, and not much to do with Thailand, but anyway...

    If any other offshore workers have any pics, then please share. AirporTwo? Nora Tittoff?


    Many people will be aware of the 1160km long Langeled Pipeline that transports gas from mid Norway to Easington in the UK. This 42 / 44 inch pipeline provides around 20% of the UK's gas requirements.

    This pipeline was laid back in 2005. There are two legs to the pipeline, a northern leg from Norway to the Sleipner Platform, and a southern leg from the Sleipner Platform to the UK. I was involved throughout 2005 with the southern leg.

    After all the various route surveys to determine a safe route with no obstructions, the first job was to protect any existing seabed pipelines and cables that crossed the route of the new pipeline. The usual method is to lay concrete mattresses across the existing lines. This was done early in the year before the pipe lay started. Thankfully I rarely have to go out on the back deck these days.



    A couple of months later the pipe lay was about to start when a pipe carrier twatted the corner of the lay barge and dented a leg. We had to check for any underwater damage before the job could continue. Anything like this causes huge delays these days.



    Anyway, all good and the lay started. The southern leg was laid by the Acergy Piper (previously the McDermott's Lay Barge LB200).

    Large diameter subsea pipelines are laid by delivering 12m (40 foot) length sections out to a lay barge, where they are welded together and pushed off the back of the barge, down a ramp called the stinger. Each 12m length has a reinforced concrete coating and weighed in at a massive 12 tons for this 44" pipeline.

    This pic shows a 12m section being loaded from a pipe carrier while the lay is ongoing, 24 hours a day, 7 says a week, months on end...



    And from the side...


  2. #2
    Thailand Expat
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    And a view from the back of the boat I was working on. Our job was to make sure the pipeline was laying down on the seabed in the correct position and to report any damage. An ROV sat on the touchdown point, and we followed along behind the lay barge. As boring as it sounds...



    Occasionally we were released to nip in front of the lay barge and carry out a pre-lay survey. This is a final survey to ensure no new obstructions are on the seabed since the route surveys were carried out. We would maybe do 30km of pre-lay survey, then come back to checking the newly laid pipeline. These lay spreads cost upwards of a million quid a day, so top priority is always not to delay the barge.

    One of the reasons for such a high cost for these spreads is the number of vessels involved. The lay barge relies on a fleet of anchor handlers to constantly pick up, carry the anchors forward and lay them down, so that the lay barge can winch itself in, thus moving forward. All the while the pipe is pushed off the back. Buoys mark the anchor positions, anchor handlers are constantly zipping about and pipe carriers are constantly bringing in cargoes of pipe. We had to work in between all that lot going on, with an underwater vehicle.



    And finally, after months and months, the southern leg of Langeled was laid down by the Sleipner Platform. This was connected to the platform by a pre-fabricated spool.



    A fleet of anchor handlers
    Last edited by Mendip; 10-11-2019 at 11:41 AM.

  3. #3
    Excommunicated baldrick's Avatar
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    probably worth noting that the winches with the anchors are computer controlled to wind in and out to maintain position which would be determined by feeds from multiple GPS units

  4. #4
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Cool thread. Lets see em.

    Do you have any pics of your living quarters like a base camp on shore or anything ?

  5. #5
    Thailand Expat David48atTD's Avatar
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    Great stuff Mendip ... a snapshot into a world I'll never see.

  6. #6
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    Yeah, interesting thanx.
    I missed the boat, excuse the pun, re that offshore malarkey, now getting too old.

  7. #7
    Thailand Expat Airportwo's Avatar
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    I have literally thousands of offshore images, in recent years I have done a lot of surveys on new build rigs which means taking a lot of mostly very boring photographs, couple here from the late seventies when we used to drill with Oil based mud, health and safety were not even in the offshore vocabulary back then!

    Random offshore pics-img_20160509_0012-jpg

    Random offshore pics-img_20160509_0023-jpg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-img_20160509_0012-jpg   Random offshore pics-img_20160509_0023-jpg  

  8. #8
    Thailand Expat Airportwo's Avatar
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    Random offshore pics-b326-siam-driller-jacking-trial-jpgThis is a good picture, taken during Jacking trials in KEFLS in Singapore.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-b326-siam-driller-jacking-trial-jpg  

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat Airportwo's Avatar
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    Something you don't see everyday, last leg section being spotted before welding - a lot of welding!! Weight ~60 ton.

    Random offshore pics-20130526_095651-jpg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-20130526_095651-jpg  

  10. #10
    Thailand Expat Airportwo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    Do you have any pics of your living quarters like a base camp on shore or anything ?
    Hows this? 150 man living quarters block being spotted, ~ 620 ton if I recall correctly.

    Random offshore pics-acc-jpg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-acc-jpg  

  11. #11
    Thailand Expat AntRobertson's Avatar
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    Nice one, some interesting pics

  12. #12
    Thailand Expat
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    Quote Originally Posted by Airportwo View Post
    I have literally thousands of offshore images, in recent years I have done a lot of surveys on new build rigs which means taking a lot of mostly very boring photographs, couple here from the late seventies when we used to drill with Oil based mud, health and safety were not even in the offshore vocabulary back then!
    A bit slacker on PPE requirements in the 70s as well by the looks of your pics!

    Even today the drill mud seems pretty harmful to marine life. When we do seabed surveys around wellheads the seabed is completely devoid of life where the drill mud has built up. I think it's boron they use these
    days?

    Many moons ago, freshly armed with my geology degree, I nearly went into mud logging on the drilling rigs. In the end I started my working life tunneling, but still ended up offshore eventually.

  13. #13
    Thailand Expat
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    Quote Originally Posted by thaiguzzi View Post
    Yeah, interesting thanx.
    I missed the boat, excuse the pun, re that offshore malarkey, now getting too old.
    It's an aging industry... I am 52 but by no means the oldest on our spreads. The medicals and survival courses have become ridiculously easy to allow the aging workforce to stay employed.

  14. #14
    Thailand Expat
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    Quote Originally Posted by baldrick View Post
    probably worth noting that the winches with the anchors are computer controlled to wind in and out to maintain position which would be determined by feeds from multiple GPS units
    Yes, it's all GPS these days. A critical thing during pipelay is to maintain the correct tension on the pipeline, so positioning is crucial. Too little tension and the weight of the suspended pipeline will cause a buckle - which then means the barge backing up, recovering the buckled pipeline, and de-welding (is that a word?) each joint during the process, so laying pipe in reverse.

    An interesting point... during the gulf war the Americans ran out of decoders for their GPS positioning system (which had a deliberately introduced error), so the error was taken out to make it more widely available. This transformed offshore positioning to sub-metric accuracy and allowed a new generation of lay barges. The modern ones are DP positioned (dynamic positioning using thrusters - locked in to satellite positioning). This obviates the need of anchors and anchor handlers.
    Last edited by Mendip; 10-11-2019 at 06:18 PM.

  15. #15
    Thailand Expat
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    A couple of other pipelay vessels.

    These are using the reel lay method. This is suitable for small diameter pipelines (10" 12" - I think a maximum of 16"), which are spooled onto a reel in batches of around 10 to 15km. These are polypropylene coated as concrete coating would just crack off.

    These are rigid steel pipelines and I find it hard to understand why they don't buckle. A metallurgist could probably explain that?

    The Apache







    The Skandi Navica alongside...



    And in action...



    This pipelay is just about to start. The yellow laydown head on the end of the pipe is about to be laid down to the seabed using a tensioned, anchored wire. There is usually a 'target box' of around 5m by 2m the laydown head needs to be laid within. After one batch of around 15km of pipe is laid, it will be temporarily laid down on the seabed, the vessel then sails back to port to pick up another batch, and on return the original pipe will be recovered so the new batch can be welded on. And so on...

  16. #16
    Freelance Astronaut
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    Fascinating thread and thanks v much!

    I learned a few things this afternoon.

  17. #17
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    awesome thread

  18. #18
    Thailand Expat
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    During the projects above I was working on the Edda Fonn, an ROV/Survey vessel. I worked on this vessel for around four years, roughly 4 weeks on, 4 weeks off, so I spent around two years of my life onboard. It gets a bit depressing thinking of it like that.

    The ROV will have been working from the blue A-frame on the starboard side. Looks like there was a second ROV on deck on the port side. Two ROVs are common for construction work as we can't afford any breakdown that could delay the lay barge.



    And crew change...


  19. #19
    Excommunicated baldrick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mendip View Post
    The modern ones are DP positioned (dynamic positioning using thrusters - locked in to satellite positioning)
    to give you an idea of the size of the props there is a man beside them - these units are electrical motor driven with variable speed drives and can rotate 360 degrees to direct the exact amount of thrust is the exact direction as calculated by the GPS units connected to the dynamic positioning system

    Random offshore pics-thrusters-4-0011-jpg

    there were 2 on each corner of this semi submersible rig - for deep water it would flood ballast tanks to sink 15-20 meters underwater for stability and use the thrusters to maintain exact position

    a lot of stairs down inside the legs to reach the pontoons which housed the VFDs ( variable frequency drives ) which controlled the precise speed of the thrusters - and the heat exchanges for cooling of the VFDs which I had the privilege to dismantle and clean of barnacles during one very long shift when we were trying to get max speed from the thrusters for sea trials

    Random offshore pics-rig-184_at_anchorage-sing-jpg

    this is looking back down the deck of an FPSO - floating production storage offshore - this unit would connect its bow turret to an underwater site and use steam to lift oil and condensates up for some processing and storage in its tanks until another tanker would come to the back and offload the stocks

    Random offshore pics-nv-sing_3002-jpg

    and this is a heavy lift by a crane ship to load on the jacking leg for a production platform

    Random offshore pics-herciiliftjacket-3-2003-jpg

    and this is how they transport jack up rigs long distance - the ship will sink underneath the jackup and then pump out to float it out of the water

    Random offshore pics-jack-up-transport-o0015-jpg

    and when in a yard or alongside or parked in the roads there was always the stairs of death to climb to access - the jack up in batam , I climbed the stairs about 15 times in one day - lucky I was young and fit

    Random offshore pics-stairs-death-o0057-jpg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-thrusters-4-0011-jpg   Random offshore pics-rig-184_at_anchorage-sing-jpg   Random offshore pics-nv-sing_3002-jpg   Random offshore pics-herciiliftjacket-3-2003-jpg   Random offshore pics-jack-up-transport-o0015-jpg  

    Random offshore pics-stairs-death-o0057-jpg  

  20. #20
    R.I.P. Luigi's Avatar
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    Very cool pics and insight.

    Big respect to the guys going out there for weeks on end every second month.



    Some of those pics seem to defy the laws of engineering/physics.

  21. #21
    Thailand Expat Airportwo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mendip View Post
    A bit slacker on PPE requirements in the 70s as well by the looks of your pics!

    Even today the drill mud seems pretty harmful to marine life. When we do seabed surveys around wellheads the seabed is completely devoid of life where the drill mud has built up. I think it's boron they use these
    days?

    Many moons ago, freshly armed with my geology degree, I nearly went into mud logging on the drilling rigs. In the end I started my working life tunneling, but still ended up offshore eventually.
    The craziest days for safety that I experienced were in the UK sector in the early seventies, the UK needed oil, safety was not a consideration.
    Be thankful you never went into mud logging, was always the lowest paid job offshore on the drilling side.


    Couple more pics:_

    Three sisters waiting for a paint job:-
    Random offshore pics-sisters-jpg



    Round rig, great stability characteristics:-
    Random offshore pics-round-jpg

    Underneath a Jack Up rig, not a nice view if you are on the back of a supply boat and it is drifting under the rig due to weather!:-
    Random offshore pics-btm-jpg
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Random offshore pics-sisters-jpg   Random offshore pics-stair7-jpg   Random offshore pics-round-jpg   Random offshore pics-btm-jpg  
    Last edited by Airportwo; 11-11-2019 at 12:45 PM.

  22. #22
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    Great pics and back story fellas. I have teams out working for the offshore companies here. We don't do construction, just supply specialist engineering services. I will have a look around for a few pics to share, if any.

  23. #23
    Thailand Expat jabir's Avatar
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    Interesting thread, great pics, won't be using it but lots of info, thanks.

  24. #24
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    Back in the mid-90's I passed an oil rig (I think it was called Harvester) in a 35 foot sailboat that I was taking from San Diego to SF with a couple of friends. It was an unusually calm night (for the area around Point Conception) and I guess that the rig took the opportunity to flare off some gas. It was around midnight and suddenly the sky was lit up by a HUGE flame coming off the rig and up into the sky. I don't know if my guess was accurate, but that flame seemed to be a couple of miles high!

    I have never seen a more awe inspiring man-made sight. It was a bright as day and a whole quadrant of the sky had turned to flame.

  25. #25
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mendip View Post
    This was connected to the platform by a pre-fabricated spool.
    The concrete encased pipe appears to run down a sloping ramp at the back of the ship, what stops it just running away? Does the ramp reach the seabed or is it just the ships slowly moving position? What happens if a storm and large waves occur, drop the pipeline to the seabed and retrieve it later?

    How is the pipe connected to the "spool" which presumably is on the sea bed?
    A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.

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