A&P Tyne Re-Delivers FPSO Haewene Brim

A&P Tyne re-delivered the FPSO Haewene Brim to Holland’s Bluewater following an extensive upgrading to its process plant and hull maintenance period refit. The vessel will now return to the Pierce Field in the U.K. sector of the North Sea under charter to Shell U.K. The contract was won in a partnership between A&P Tyne Limited and McNulty Offshore Contractors Limited of South Shields, who were the prime contractor. The Pierce field is 150 miles due east of Aberdeen in the UKCS (U.K. continental shelf) with a 85 m water depth.

Shell’s requirement was to upgrade the production output and the field life of Pierce by injecting treated seawater to sweep down dip oil and sustain field pressure. The water will be injected via a retrofit dynamic riser and new flowlines running from a new riser base out to four new horizontal valve injection wells.

The work scope involved in the upgrading and dry-docking of Haewene Brim as follows:

· Fabrication of 300 tons of module steelwork. Four skids were produced in the fabrication shop at Hebburn, weighing up to 100 tons each. These were then blasted and painted before being delivered to the assembly area adjacent to the drydock for addition of the mechanical and electrical equipment.

· Assisting McNulty Contractors Limited in the assembly, installation and commissioning of modules. As part of the agreed scope of work A&P Tyne were contracted to provide support to the many activities carried out on site by McNulty Contractors Limited, the Topsides contractor.

· Addition of Water injection, chemical and filtration skids to the process plant on deck. The process equipment added to the skids took the maximum single lifting weight up to 450 tons. Compressors, pumps, filtration equipment, de-aeration equipment, pipework, controls and instrumentation were added to the skids prior to lifting these on board the vessel. This lifting task commenced one week after the vessel’s arrival. See photograph of the 450 ton chemical injection skid being lifted.

· Dry-docking & marine systems upgrade various marine systems. Various routine dry-docking activities took place in parallel with the plant upgrading works.

· Hull blasting and painting. Removal of about 15,000 sq. m. of TBT coatings on the vessel's hull and recoating with a 10-year life tin-free alternative was an important task in the docking period.

· Tank blasting & painting. A full blasting and recoating task was undertaken in both slop tanks on the vessel. This entailed removal and recoating of some 4,500 sq. m. of tank coatings.

This vessel has a long history with A&P Tyne - she was originally converted at the Hebburn facility from the Multi Service Tanker (MST) Berge Hugin for use the BP Pierce field in 1998. The Hebburn dry-dock is the only facility in the UK and one of only three in Europe specially adapted to accommodate operational FPSO’s of this size. The drydock at Hebburn measures some 250 m in length with a dock gate of 44 m wide. The dock is serviced by 100 ton cranes on both sides and is equipped with a number of sunken pits that allow vessels with both under-slung turret mooring arrangements and azimuth thrusters to be accommodated. Two new pits were created at 5 x 5 x 3 m deep to allow the complete change out of the two Rolls-Royce Azimuthing thruster units as part of the A&P Tyne scope of work.