Toca News

The Honghua Group Limited has awarded a $12 million front-end engineering design (FEED) contract to Wood for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform development in the West Delta area of the Gulf of Mexico. The main objective of the FEED is to finalize the design of the world’s first offshore platform-based natural gas liquefaction and storage facility. Wood recently completed the pre-FEED for this project. Wood’s scope of work includes the onshore gas pre-treatment plant configuration and layouts, general utilities, feed gas processing and compression, and transportation and delivery via repurposed pipelines from the existing onshore Toca and Venice, Louisiana, facilities to the LNG facility 10 miles offshore.

Keppel FELS has delivered a KFELS B Class jackup rig, to Constructora y Perforadora Latina (CP LATINA), a private Mexican company in the energy sector. The rig was named La Santa Mariaat a ceremony in Keppel FELS. Delivered on time and with a perfect safety record, it will be chartered to Pemex, Mexico's national oil company, for deployment in offshore Mexico. La Santa Maria  is the first of two high-specification jackup rigs that Keppel FELS is building for CP Latina. The second rig is on schedule to be delivered in 4Q 2013. Mr Wong Kok Seng, Managing Director (Offshore) of Keppel Offshore & Marine and Managing Director of Keppel FELS, said, "This on time and safe delivery is a demonstration of the win-win partnership we have developed with our new customer CP Latina.

Caspian Drilling Company, based in Azerbaijan, will install ABS Nautical Systems’ NS5 Enterprise software on four of its drilling rigs. Three of these rigs will take advantage of the ABS Newbuild Program and the Transfer of Class Agreement Initiative (TOCA)* by implementing the Hull Inspection and Maintenance & Repair modules. A Survey Planning Document will be prepared for each of these rigs as well. Utilizing these offerings represents a savings of over $300,000 in software licenses, database development and consulting services.

ABS Nautical Systems has signed a contract with Arina Offshore (Fze) for use of its NS5 Enterprise software, marking the fourth new customer win in this region. The Dubai based company which specializes in vessel chartering and brokerage will utilize the Maintenance Manager module on one of its offshore vessels through the ABS Transfer of Class Agreement (TOCA) Initiative*. The TOCA Initiative offers free software to any vessel that transfers class into ABS. Arina Offshore (Fze) also will implement the Purchasing & Inventory module from the NS5 software suite on two additional vessels. These modules give Arina Offshore (Fze) the ability to proactively monitor maintenance trends as well as streamline purchasing, budgeting and inventory processes.

American Bureau of Shipping, Det Norske Veritas and Lloyd's Register have developed a series of initiatives to further improve the safety of international shipping. The three leading classification societies have agreed on ten actions that will strengthen the classification profession and make poor quality vessels easier to identify and act upon. The past 12 months have highlighted an apparent weakness in the ability of Classification Societies to respond to critical issues facing the shipping industry. While continuing to support IACS, the three societies will refocus much of their considerable resources on the important quality issues facing the profession and the wider shipping community.

Implementation of nine of the ten sweeping safety initiatives announced by ABS, DNV and Lloyd's Register on March 15, 2001 will take place on July 1 as scheduled, the three leading classification societies have announced. An aggressive timetable was set as it was considered imperative that the classification profession reconfirm its credibility as an effective self-regulating mechanism for the marine industry. The cooperation and trust that has developed between the management and staff of the three organizations has enabled these initiatives to be quickly processed. As indicated in March, the one initiative that requires more time due to its complexity, is the establishment of common basic design criteria including hydrodynamic loads and corrosion margins for standard ship types.