Deepwater Construction Vessel ‘Aegir’ Shifting the Frontiers of Reeling

Abstract Description of the material In the coming decades a significant rise in ultra-deepwater developments is expected. In 2013, Heerema Marine Contractors brought its multi-purpose Deepwater Construction Vessel ‘Aegir’ in operation with the aim to maintain and extend its position in this rapidly expanding market. The paper will focus on the novel concept of the vessel with a fully revised view on pipe reeling logistics. Application The vessel is equipped with exchangeable reels, a concept enabling to keep the pipelay vessel in the field during its pipeline reeling operations. This efficiency gain will induce a step change in the economics of reeling. The presentation will illustrate how the functional requirements were translated into the specific lay-out of the vessel and how the requirements of the reeling system played a dominant role in this. Many of the future deepwater oil and gas fields will be in open ocean waters. A number of novel features have been included in the design to ensure a good workability of the conventional hull-shaped Aegir in long ocean swells, in particular where it concerns the lifting of reels on board the vessel, in order to ensure continuous reeling operations. Introducing the new pipelay concept with exchangeable reels required the design of new industrial processes for filling the reels at a spoolbase and transporting them to the Aegir. The separation of the reel spooling and transport from the pipelay vessel offers new opportunities for tuning the logistics process to specific project needs. Results, Observations and Conclusions The paper will discuss the properties of the vessel and the pipe lay system, the test results, performance of the off-line spooling process and performance in the field. The market shows appetite for the new reeling concept: meanwhile, two major subsea construction projects have been landed for the Aegir, both making use of exchangeable reels. It will be illustrated how the different settings of these projects lead to different logistic concepts. The paper will also touch upon the first in field experience with Aegir. Significance of Subject matter Subsea Field development, in particular the ultra-deep, HP/HT fields require Game changing Vessel concepts like Aegir to be able to serve the operators. Also when they decide to move to water depths beyond 10,000' with flow lines requiring top tension lay-capacity of 2000tn in remote areas of the world.