Moving mountains

“We expect to deliver the SeaWolf Oritsetimeyin – on schedule, on budget and according to plan in August, and another in the same class in December this year. Naturally, we are very excited and extremely proud of this,” beams Jerry Smith, managing director at MIS.

MIS has been operating in the region since 1979, providing a comprehensive line of engineering, fabrication and maintenance services to the oil, gas, petrochemical and marine sectors.

The 200 000m2 yard at Mina Khalid in Shajah, has exploited the capacity-shortage in traditional newbuild sites in Singapore, China and the US Gulf Coast to leverage a position for itself among the ranks of the world’s newbuild yards for major offshore jack-up drilling rigs.

SeaWolf Oritsetimeyin, originally contracted by Norwegian Mosvold Jackup in 2006, is the first of two offshore jack-up drilling rigs being built by MIS for SeaWolf Oilfield Services, a Nigerian drilling company, in a contract worth US $254m.

The rig is a Friede and Goldman Super Mod 2 design with 30 000 foot rated drilling depth and an operating water depth capability of 300 feet. SeaWolf Onome, SeaWolf’s second jack up rig under MIS’s construction, is the same specification and scheduled for delivery to SeaWolf in December 2008.

Until the current projects were undertaken, MIS traditionally undertook maintenance and refurbishment work on jackup rigs operating around the Arabian Peninsula. “As a yard we’ve specialised somewhat on these as there isn’t really that much demand for semi submersible rigs in the Gulf region,” explains Smith.

Most of the designs in use now have actually been in existence for some time, but what’s driving business for most yards in the region is older class rigs being overhauled and enhanced in a comprehensive way. “This can incorporate anything from making the hull bigger, or the legs stronger, but the thing that’s really changing on the rigs is the equipment package,” says Smith.

“The computers and electronic system are being massively upgraded, and this has a direct impact on the drilling methodology and the drilling technology that’s deployed also. This equipment and integrated systems approach has gone through a huge amount of development over the last decade,” he says.

Enhancing and maintaining the behemoth structures carries significant logistical challenges for the yards. To manoeuvre the rig the legs are raised skywards and the rig becomes a floating entity.

These are then towed by tug boats to the location where the work will be carried out. Once at the yard the legs are then used to jackup the rig to the requisite height for the work to be carried out. This keeps the surface level constant and increases stability compared to when the rig is floating.

“The rigs are designed to cope with a fairly severe storm even when they are in the floating state, but it would be fair to say this is when they are at their most vulnerable. The stability is gone, and in really rough conditions it is quite possible for equipment, or parts of the structure to sustain damage in this condition.”
 

The structures are much better protected from the elements when they are raised on the legs.

Unless there are extremely severe storm conditions with huge waves, such as the now notorious Katrina or Rita in the Gulf of Mexico, then typically there wouldn’t be any damage to the rigs.

Getting the materials sourced and bought, and delivered obviously poses another set of logistical problems…these are typically taken care of in advance.

“If work needs to be carried out on the seat of the legs then what we do is manoeuvre a barge underneath the rig hull, which will enable the legs to be exposed, although typically such work would be carried out in a dry dock,” explains Smith.

When the rigs are under tow one large tug is sufficient to move the rigs from A to B, but positioning the rigs in a yard environment requires more tugs. “Most jackup designs don’t have any power themselves to control movement, so for control. Some can drop anchor and then position themselves by using those.

The kind of work being carried out is becoming much more complex. Older rigs are being brought in to have sophisticated equipment installed.

All the rigs are classed marine vessels, so as such it has to have special survey’s done at regularly programmed times.

These surveys may reveal corrosion, and whilst that is being fixed, in order to reduce down-time an owner would also choose that docked time as an opportunity to carry out any upgrades or overhauls.

“It’s that reduction in utilisation time more than the current oil price environment that is dictating the work schedule of these rigs,” says Smith.

Most jackup rigs in service are built under ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) classification. “The evolution of the design that we’re dealing with was originally classed by ABS, which means when it comes to managing the enhancements its just easier and more simple to go through ABS than to start with a new firm,” he adds.

The nature of repair on marine vessels mean that yards often don’t know the full extent of what the repairs are going to be until certain sections are opened up or it’s out of the water. This could deliver a totally different set of circumstances, and if the situation was not anticipated, that could delay the job.

“Getting the materials sourced and bought, and delivered obviously poses another set of logistical problems, but more often than not these are taken care of in advance of the move into dock,” says Smith.

Having enough resources to gang up on the rig and get the work done in a timely fashion is the priority. When the rigs come in the owner wants the turnaround to be as swift as possible. Essentially owners want the rig back out as soon as possible because keeping lost day-rates to a minimum is crucial.

“The drilling equipment, engines, pumps and generators aren’t usually made here in the UAE. Having said that, from every other kind of equipment we’re building everything for those at our fabrication yard here in Sharjah,” says Smith.

The drilling industry is used to working on a short-notice basis.

The kind of equipment used is common across many rigs in a given drilling environment, such as the Gulf, so it’s common for a solid supply of that technology and equipment to be nearby the rigs.

“Here in the UAE we have very large and well stocked Caterpillar store who provide well-stocked supplies of everything needed from a power generation perspective on the rigs, and National Oilwell Varco which supplies most of the drilling equipment have a comprehensive and well-stocked service centre here.”
 

Weather is always an important factor in any construction environment. The majority of rig work is done outside, and the things that delay us most on that front are rain, intense heat and wind.

“The heat we can do something about if we’re working inside the barge or rig because we have air conditioning units similar to those hooked up to an aircraft when its waiting at the airport, which blows cool air into the hull and cool things down for people in there, but if you’re working out in the sun on the deck it gets very hot.”

In the UAE there is a mandatory shutdown for the hottest part of the day, allowing respite for the workers and avoiding the most extreme heat.

“Most of our jobs on rig repair and newbuilding are on a 24 hours a day basis. The yard is floodlit but the night crew isn’t quite as large as the day shift. No matter what lighting you install workers cannot see as well at night so there are restrictions on certain elements of the repair work at night, and that’s a safety precaution on our part.”

Shifting from a primary maintenance function to newbuilds has presented unprecedented challenges to the MIS team.

“This was a design last built more than 15 or 20 years ago. The design has been changed and enhanced to accommodate the newest generation of drilling equipment so the front-end engineering involved some very intensive work trying to get all of the details ironed out and approved by the classification society,” says Smith.

With huge jobs such as the SeaWolf projects the company has had to substantially build up its resources too. Securing the right calibre of highly skilled engineers is one of the biggest challenges.

“Right now, with the way the oil and gas market is performing it’s hard to find, attract, and keep these personnel. Keeping qualified technical middle-management is a hugely significant challenge to MIS, and I’m pretty sure every other company in our field.”

The recruitment challenge is common every time the industry goes through a ramping-up phase, driven primarily by the oil price, such as the one we find ourselves in right now.

“Any industry that experiences a surge such as we have in this sector would no doubt have similar problems on a manpower
and expertise front.”

The recruitment issue has been particularly forced for MIS as very few rigs were built between the early eighties through to the current boom, which kicked off around 2005.

“Many of the engineers with the required skill sets and experience in this kind of work have drifted off into the sunset, however, it’s not that different from a host of other marine engineering disciplines though, and staff have been able to adapt.”

Right now newbuilds are dominating the Sharjah firm’s revenue and profit stream, but Smith says that may change in the future. “As newbuild demand drops off, maintenance will always be there, but at the moment the rig market covering newbuild demand and maintenance is extremely strong,”

In the current price environment there is already, and will be for some time, a huge amount of work to do in the Middle East. With yards around the region no doubt clawing to muscle in on the newbuild action, for the time being it remains the MIS trump card.

“Something we’re particularly proud of is that, to our knowledge, we are the first yard that’s on schedule with the first rig it’s ever built,” concludes Smith.