On June 2, "Pioneering Spirit", the world's largest ship for installation and removal of offshore platforms, completed the installation of the 22,000t drilling platform topsides for the Johan Sverdrup Oilfield of Equinor (the original Statoil ASA) offshore Norway. The debut of "Pioneering Spirit" has set many records. It proved to be the heaviest offshore single-lift installation and the fastest installation of a large topside to date.
Allseas, the ship's owner of “Pioneering Spirit”, announced that it was the first time for "Pioneering Spirit" to install offshore platforms, which made it the heaviest offshore single-lift installation till now. The drilling platform topsides was placed on an eight-leg steel pipe jacket where the water depth is 110 meters as the beam of compensated the motion of the topsides of the "Pioneering Spirit" as planned.
On June 1, the 147-meter-high topsides started to be installed after it was transferred by a barge to the "Pioneering Spirit", which arrived at Johan Sverdrup Oilfield（160 kilometers west of Stavanger）nine hours later.
The actual installation took three hours, according to Allseas. Equinor pointed out that this may be the fastest installation of large topsides.
In 2016, Allseas won the contract for the installation of three offshore platform topsides for the Johan Sverdrup Oilfield. The "Pioneering Spirit" will undertake to install the drilling platform topsides, process platform topsides and living quarters platforms. After the installation of the drilling platform, the "Pioneering Spirit" will return to Johan Sverdrup Oilfield in the spring of 2019 to install 26,000t process platform and 18,000 t living quarters platform.
Stale Hanssen, the project manager of jacket, installation and debugging of the Johan Sverdrup Oilfield, pointed out that the "Pioneering Spirit", through adopting new lifting techniques, is capable of realizing a single-lift installation of large platform and will change the rules of the game of the industry.
With a length of 382 meters, 124 meters beam, 59 meter-wide-slot between two hulls and a lifting capacity of 48,000 tons, "Pioneering Spirit”is the world's largest ship, which is mainly used for the installation and removal of offshore platforms.
At present, the large topsides design has been modularized. No crane can lift over 12,000 tons at a single lift. However, "Pioneering Spirit" is able to lift the entire topsides weighing 48,000 tons at a single lift. This technology was originally developed for platform scrapping and this is the first time that it has been applied to install new large topsides.
Equinor said it would significantly compress the time and reduce the cost in the period of construction and installation, as well as the health, environment and safety related.
Source:International Shipping Network