Ukooa News

Press Release - Dutch Special Marine Group has designed a small range of Fast Daughter Craft (FDC). A FDC’s function is to operate away from the mother ship or offshore installations for extended periods of time. The primary function is to search for and rescue persons lost at sea. Effective search and recovery require a Fast Daughter Craft with excellent reliability, manoeuvrability and sea keeping abilities. In order guarantee this our designer, Pieter Meuzelaar, took the proven hull of our Fast Rescue Craft  903 (KNRM) but enlarged beam and reshaped the bow area to obtain more bow height.

The Zamakona Yards in Pasajes has successfully finished the works carried o t in the vessels VOS HADES and VOS HERA that belong to the Company Vroon Offshore Services UK. The conversion required a major upgrade of the VOS H-Class to enable Rescue & Standby facilities for a Group B vessel. The project´s design done by OSD-IMT OFFSHORE SHIP DESIGNERS was created in order to meet the customer´s requirements and the UK MCA and UKOOA regulations. - New accommodation areas such as treatment area, hospital, reception, survivors and non survivors’ facilities, etc have been done. For those areas, new steel modules have been necessary, rearrangement of several spaces on board, new rescue zone, etc. - New bridge wings have been installed according to UKOOA requirements. – Painter booms, etc.

Palfinger Ned-Deck and its subsidiary Fast RSQ received an order from Sentinel Marine Ltd. in Aberdeen to supply UKOOA compliant rescue equipment for four emergency response and rescue vessels (ERRVs), which will include one 7 m aluminum fast rescue craft, type FRSQ 700 A; one 10 m aluminum daughter craft, type FRSQ 1000 A; one PRH 35H FRC davit and one PRH 75AP daughter craft davit. “This order allows Palfinger Ned-Deck to maintain its hold on the davit sector for ERRVs and the company has also announced the arrival of its subsidiary Fast RSQ…

‘Guidance for developing and conducting annual DP trial programs for DP vessels’ (IMCA M 190) has been published by the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) to describe the development, conduct and management of annual dynamically positioned (DP) trial programs for all types of vessels equipped with DP systems meeting the requirements of International Maritime Organization (IMO) equipment classes 1, 2 or 3. Sister publication, IMCA M 191 ‘Guidelines for annual DP trials for DP mobile offshore drilling units’, sets out a program of continuous trials throughout the year. This guidance will also be applicable to mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs).

After an extensive review and update, the former UKOOA document “Guidelines for the use of GPS in offshore surveying” has been jointly issued as a new document by theInternational Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP) and the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA). The document was reviewed by a workgroup comprising representatives of OGP’s Geomatics Committee and IMCA’s Offshore Survey Division Management Committee, as well as representatives from the marine survey industry. The use of satellite positioning is critical to the success of a wide variety of oil and gas related surveying and positioning projects. The “Guidelines…

Delta Power Group (builder of Delta RIBs) announced three recent contracts. Both the 10.80m Phantom daughter craft, modified for Arctic waters and the 9m Irish Coastguard vessels make their debut at this year’s Seawork exhibition (The 10.80m is on E P Barrus’ berth 12 and the 9m Irish Coastguard vessel is on Yamaha’s berth 3). The Severn Area Rescue Association’s new Delta RIB (March 2011 delivery) is based on the Delta six person SOLAS 450IPI Rescue RIB and is fitted with sophisticated communications equipment to facilitate searching for survivors at both day and night.

A new release of C-Nav’s C-Monitor includes a full Quality Control (QC) display feature. The QC solution, specifically tailored to meet the demands of C-Nav’s real-time Precise Point Positioning service, uses a statistically sound RAIM algorithm to detect, identify and eliminate data outliers, then reports the rejection process via NMEA and binary messages. The RAIM algorithm incorporates the latest analytical techniques and is the most comprehensive developed to date. After eliminating outliers, the process performs statistical analysis on the remaining observations using techniques that comply with IMO/NMEA requirements and exceed UKOOA recommendations.

A chronic shortage of rigs and workers has doubled the cost of producing oil and gas in the North Sea, threatening to make the UK’s domestic oil industry uncompetitive, warned UKOOA, the association of North Sea offshore operators, according to Times Online. Signs that costs are crimping investment emerge in the association’s survey of North Sea activity. Further evidence of the dramatic worldwide oil industry cost escalation emerged in a new index showing a 53 per cent increase in project costs over just two years. The Upstream Capital Costs Index, launched by IHC and Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera), climbed 13 per cent in the six months to the end of October because of soaring inflation in hiring rigs, shipyard fabrication and labour.

Record fossil fuel prices have caused a revival in the Scotland-based North Sea oil and gas industry, resulting in a near-record spend of $19 billion this year and the creation of 25,000 additional jobs across Britain, according to a recent Oil & Gas Journal report. These estimates were reported by the UK Offshore Operators' Association (UKOOA), and reflect a reverse in the development activity in the region. Over the past 11 months UKOOA companies had revised their capital expenditures from $6.5 billion to $7.8 billion, the highest level of investment since 1998. This value contributes to the overall spend of $11 billion for the year, according to the report.