Germans net impressive offshore giants
Up to six of these could be built in Germany
In spectacular news for German shipbuilding, P+S Werften in Stralsund has won two firm contracts worth some €200 million and two further options for big offshore installation newbuildings for a Singapore-based concern.
Tom Todd writes: Officials added the order could eventually cover six ships. The 172m long and 25m wide ships, reportedly for delivery up to 2013, will be of semi-submersible design with three high-capacity cranes each, two of them of 400ton capacity. They will also have stern ro-ro ramps with docking functions for floating cargo. Running through each ship will be a 100m long and 18m wide hold which can be divided vertically or horizontally as required.
Installed specialist offshore equipment will include a flex pipes laying system, DP system, a heli-pad and an additional accommodation module as well as 17,300kW of installed power.
A statement said only that the newbuilds, being named OIG Giant III and OIG Giant IV, were costing a meaningless “three figure sum in the millions of euros”. Unofficial reports spoke of about €200 million.
The ships are for the Singapore-based Offshore Installation Group (OIG) created by German shipping company Harren & Partners (HP) and now majority owned by Goldmann Sachs Capital Partners. They are based on Harren’s ‘Combi Dock’ ships and have been further developed by HP and P+S Werften to meet the special demands of oil and gas field exploitation and installation in deep waters.
HP’s Peter Harren said: “Our ships will have three times the deck area of competing vessels. There will be no need for additional heavy-lift vessels for equipment transport. They will have everything they need on board”.
Revealing that options for two further ships had been secured with P&S, Harren added: “There are at present good grounds for believing that we could eventually also build numbers five and six in Stralsund”.
That would bring the OIG fleet to eight. OIG Giant I is already in operation and Harren’s heavy-lift Combi Dock 1V is being converted into OIG Giant II at Lloyd Werft in Bremerhaven.
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