Heavyweight Division

The heavy lift industry is primarily associated with construction. Particularly in the Middle East, cranes are invariably linked to the build sector and were once the source of many urban legends surrounding the percentage of the world’s cranes located in Dubai.

But with the construction sector suffering from a slowdown over the past few months, heavy lift companies have focused more of their attention on oil and gas based business in the Middle East.

“The upstream oil and gas sector shows a trend of gradual development of the Middle East infrastructures. This has resulted in a potential growth in the market for boom cranes, as oil and gas and its related projects have proved to be more resilient through 2009 in the present scenario, due to the down trend of the construction sectors which are expected to take off again during the second quarter of 2010,” Mohammed Razzaqi, product manager of Darwish Bin Ahmed and Sons reveals.

Frank Hillerbrandt, managing director of Stahl Crane Systems also confirms that oil and gas has moved into the spotlight for heavy lift firms. “Our success in the oil and gas industry is growing reasonably in the year 2009 compared to the rest of the market,” he states.

This increase in business has been witnessed most in certain areas of the Middle East. “The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia have experienced the most dramatic growth. Saudi Arabia is the largest regional market and is followed by UAE, and Kuwait,” says Razzaqi.

However working outside of the country where a company is based can bring in logistical issues.

“When the equipment is going out of the UAE there are logistical problems with that. So we are only interested if it is a big job,” states Hussein Ansar, deputy manager of Dubai based firm Fabexi Trading.

However some firms are now looking to actively exploit countries such as Saudi Arabia, as Hillerbrandt explains. “In the past we have been much more concentrated of the market outside of Saudi Arabia. We now want to extend our leading position which we are holding in the other Middle East areas to Saudi Arabia.”

Liebherr, a company involved in manufacturing the cranes used in the industry, also sees the benefits of being involved in oil and gas. “Oil and gas projects were less affected than construction work. After the real estate collapse in October 2008 many huge projects were cancelled (e.g. Arabian Canal), this was not seen in the oil and gas sector,” states Wolfgang Beringer, sales promotion, Liebherr.

The company offers a wide range of cranes, although not all of its range is used extensively in the Middle East. “Generally we offer our complete range of cranes, but mainly we sell in this area mobile cranes from 70 – 1200 tonne capacity, crawler cranes from 280 – 750 tonne capacity and harbour mobile cranes in the range of 100 tonne capacity,” comments Beringer.

Beringer also states Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar as the countries which make up the biggest market in the Middle East, and adds Bahrain to the list also. The major use of cranes in the region for the energy sector is in erecting rigs, moving of rigs and shutdowns, according to Beringer.

“The biggest markets are Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE(Abu Dhabi), Kuwait and Oman. But also remaining market leaders in KSA and UAE are still in the process of overhauling their standards to EN and ISO and this will give us the chance to supply our products according to latest and most safe standards,” reports Hillerbrandt.

One of the major challenges which is affecting the heavy lift industry, and one which should not be ignored, is keeping the highest standards of safety intact and working well.

“Security is the big issue, you have to work hand in hand with the safety people. A lot of paper work has to be done. The cranes have to be equipped with emergency shutdown systems, spark arrestors,” says Beringer.

Hillerbrandt agrees that the main challenges revolve around safety, particularly when working in the oil and gas sector. He reveals that special explosion proof specifications are required in order to suit various hazardous areas classifications.

Corrosion protection measures are also needed to be put in place due to the marine environments that heavy lift equipment are sometimes needed to work in.

“The industry needs to develop more health and safety processes and instruction manuals. Extended Quality procedures. (e.g. factory shop test) and an adherence to high level of quality management is needed and strong cooperation between supplier and customer and/or contractor is vital,” states Hillerbrandt.

“The cranes have to be in top condition and they are inspected by the owners of the plants or third parties.”

Another challenge is the amount of competition and the increasingly higher standards demanded from customers. “Our challenge is the competition with other companies which are operating in this market. Some of them are older than us in the UAE market so it is our challenge to offer services at competitive prices and standard of quality for this field,” comments Ansar.

“Customers are difficult these days with higher standards than even two years ago. Accordingly we have upgraded our standards to be accepted by the customers. This is the main challenge for us,” he adds.

Companies in the heavy lift sector have had to find alternative forms of business following the construction slowdown, and for the many firms with a vested interest in oil and gas, the solution was obvious.

With the industry now looking like it is rebounding there can now be a lighter outlook for heavy lifting.

Case study: World’s strongest crane

The world’s largest boom telescopic mobile crane, a Liebherr LTM11200-9.1, was used for moving parts in the fabrication of a self-propelled rig known as a ‘Seajack’ at Lamprell’s UAE yard, through the first week of August. Specialist ‘builder’ Lamprell needed to lift and place the top two segments on the rig – fittingly named Leviathan.

The four legs, each totaling a height of 86.46m, incorporate eight segments. For the 7th and 8th segments, each weighing 52 tonnes , the crane was positioned alongside the Seajack to provide a 26m radius and capitalise on the cranes telescopic boom – capable of reaching up to 100m – to ensure fast lifts and speedier erection times for each of the legs.

The Al Faris Rental crane was configured with 202 tonne counterweights and an 88.30m boom length.

Additionally, in a twin lift with a Liebherr LTM1500-8.1 500t capacity mobile crane, the cranes were used to lift and position a Huisman marine crane at the stern of the seajack for permanent installation.

The LTM11200 was configured with a 53.3m boom and superlift and the LTM1500 with a 31.7m boom to lift the 138t Heisman in a ‘top and tail’ operation.

The Seajack ‘Leviathan’ is a self propelled, self elevating lift boat intended for harsh environment conditions and was commissioned to install wind turbines in the North Sea.

Equipped with the latest Class 2 dynamic positioning technology the vessel is fitted with high standard accommodation for up to 90 people.

The alternative option for Lamprell was to use Al Faris’s 500t Liebherr’s in a tandem lift operation with both cranes being rigged on luffing jib configuration.

This was ruled out as the cranes would have had to be repositioned for each of the four legs; taking more time to complete the job and adding a further expense to the client.

Safety study: Stahl Cranes QatarGas order

The six 80 tonne overhead travelling cranes with explosion protected hoists are used for maintenance work in a gas liquefaction plant.

The most important requirement, and part of the order, was for the cranes to be load tested before erection and commission on the customers site. In order to minimise expensive testing periods, and thus downtimes, all the cranes were to be load tested and be accepted by the customer on STAHL CraneSystems premises.

The firm therefore built an unique test rig specifically for this purpose, with which cranes with an S.W.L up to 150t can be tested. This test rig offers all our customers the advantage of being supplied by fully tested cranes. The project was also completed ahead of schedule. QatarGas scheduled approximately 17 months for manufacturing and erecting the six cranes and refurbishing and modernising the existing cranes in another LNG plant.

To the gratification of Qatar Gas, Stahl managed to complete the whole volume of the order within 14 months. The success of this project had a big impact as Stahl recently received an order for replacing four existing hoists.