Page 37: of Marine News Magazine (April 2011)

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Guidry is now signing contracts for the construction of a vessel with 71 beds and a 165 MT crane. “It will be the only U.S. flagged boat that can lower 100 tons to 10,000 feet,” he said. And yet another newbuild will have 125 beds and a 250 MT crane that will be able to lower 160 tons to 10,000 feet. What’s more, Guidry said “I’m going to spend more money to put the Tier III engines in. I don’t have to spend the additional half a million per boat,” he said, but he sees it as a savings in the long term.

Safety is also a large part of the evo- lution of offshore support vessels and

Guidry said that after the Deepwater

Horizon disaster there was discussion that the sinking of the rig had been caused by water sprayed from boats.

Since then, Guidry decided that all his new vessels will spray a foam water mixture that is lighter than just water. “So we’ll be spraying half the weight on a fire,” he said. “That’s huge and it’s very expensive. We’ll have to have special typing, special tanks, special systems to mix the foam.” However, he continued, “We’re going to commit the capital and be the safest and best. While nobody is requiring this, I’m going ahead and doing it now because one day I think it will be required and I’ll be ahead of the game.” “Plan for today and build for tomorrow, that’s what the boat busi- ness is all about.”

When asked about the state of the offshore support market, Guidry con- firmed that “it’s been a little challeng- ing, but we’ve been fortunate. We’ve kept our fleet very busy.” “Right now we have four vessels towing rigs back and forth between

Mexico and Brownsville, Texas.”

Harvey towing vessels brought 12 jackup rigs to the U.S. for repairs and then towed them back to Mexico.

Other Harvey Gulf towing vessels are working for a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit while some have been on a recent job taking a rig to Trinidad, Africa. A

Harvey dive support vessel has been working in Tridinad as well, doing dive inspections and maintenance. “Obviously we couldn’t dive in the oil here,” Guidry said, “so we had to go somewhere else.”

The rest of Harvey’s offshore sup- port vessels are working here in Gulf, for production rigs, and now some have been reassigned to drilling sup- port. www.marinelink.com MN 37

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