Page 10: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (July 1999)

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Investment in Design

Based in each case on a 12-cylinder

Mitsubishi Vee engine driving a 650 kW generator, the four genset modules will be arranged on deck, feeding electrical energy to a pair of propulsion motors.

The genset modules will be put together at the Spikkestad production plant of

Norwegian company Diesel Power. It is anticipated that the vessel's regular ser- vice schedule, on a characteristically short fjord crossing, will require just two aggregates to be fired-up, leaving one engine as a standby, and a fourth under maintenance in a rolling program whereby machinery upkeep can be undertaken without prejudicing vessel availability.

Niche know-how

Pivotal to the quantification of new oilfields and, increasingly, to the fuller exploitation of existing or marginal accumulations, offshore seismic survey has become an intensely-competitive niche business in its own right. Perfor- mance levels set by the demands and expectations of the client industry have been driven still higher by the operators' need to achieve unprecedented produc- tivity from costly vessels incorporating multi-streamer arrays and the most tech- nologically advanced data handling capabilities.

The 1999 first-half has witnessed a considerable strengthening in the fleet purpose-designed for the task of seismic survey, undertaken in often hostile envi- ronmental conditions and in an ever- more demanding commercial market.

The latest surge of investment has been dominated by Norwegian yards and equipment suppliers, underscoring the range and depth of the Norwegian mar- itime industrial infrastructure.

At a time when the shipbuilding indus- try's forward workload gives rise to immediate-term concerns over produc- tion continuity, the clutch of recent deliveries of new-generation seismic ships testifies to the reserves of design and build know-how and scope of indigenous equipment and machinery supply available on Norway's Atlantic fringe.

While the U.S. influence on the busi- ness is manifested in the commissioning of the 16-streamer Western Trident from

Ulstein Verft, Norwegian-based opera- tors PGS and Geco-Prakla have bol- stered capacity with 20-streamer new- builds from the Langsten and Mjellem &

Karlsen yards, respectively.

The designs reflect the trend in demand towards wider tows, bigger arrays and longer streamers in 3-D exploration work, and the requirement for dense blanket coverage for the high- resolution 3-D market. These remark- able ships embody efficient hulls formed to accommodate the aft-deck concentra- tion of the tools of the trade and to pro- vide stable working platforms in the most rigorous sea conditions. They have been engineered for high maneuverabil- ity and for the minimum noise and vibration interference with the central role of data gathering.

The industry's ability to demonstrate the kind of innovation and technological capability which bears directly on front- line economics is evident in the fact that the cost of undertaking 3-D seismic sur- vey has been progressively cut from some $25,500 per sq. km in 1990 to around just $2,000 per sq. km now. In addition, survey assignment time has typically been cut from about two years to barely two months or less over the

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