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Special 25 years in the planning – Allseas’ • Pipelay system: A 2000-tonne

Pieter Schelte facts: capacity S-Lay pipelay system,

Pieter Schelte arrives able to handle 24m pipe sections • Dimensions: 382m-long and 124m-wide, unique and long-awaited sight arrived (double joints) under tension using with a 59-wide slot for removing topsides.

A at one of Europe’s busiest ports early four 500-tonne tensioners, with a • Lift capability: 48,000-tonne for topsides

January - Allseas’ 382m-long, 124m-wide 170m-long stinger.

using eight sets of horizontal lifting platform installation/decommissioning and • Power: 12 thrusters at 75-tonne beams, at 6000-tonne a piece, across pipelay mega-vessel Pieter Schelte.

a piece, powered by eight main the slot for removal or installation of

The giant €2.4billion, twin-hull vessel diesel generators, providing a total topsides.

left ship builder Daewoo Shipbuilding and installed 95MW power • 25,000-tonne for jackets, using two tilt-

Marine Engineering’s Okpo shipyard in • Yard: Daewoo Shipbuilding and ing lift beams on the stern for lifting and

South Korea 17 November, after four years’

Marine Engineerin g laydown construction, stopping by Singapore and

Cape Town.

The vessel, which entered the Rotterdam harbor on her own propulsion, is due to be moored at a rented deepwater site at

Rotterdam’s new Maasvlakte in order to have a topsides lift-system beams installed on the bows.

Test lifts with the system will then be carried out on a test platform in the Southern North

Sea, which Allseas is building, after which the vessel is due to remove the Talisman Yme platform topsides, in summer 2015.

The removal of the Shell Brent Delta platform is planned later in the summer of 2015, or in the spring of 2016. The vessel was also lined up for a pipelay job on the

South Stream offshore pipeline section, but the project was put on hold by Russian president Vladimir Putin 1 December, citing

European Union opposition.

The Pieter Schelte, the brainchild of

Image from KOTUG/Van der Kloet.

Allseas founder Edward Heerema, has been 25 years in the planning. The vessel was designed to make a signi? cant impact on the heavy lift capability currently available in the global offshore market, both for platform installation and decommissioning; and pipelay with its 2000-tonne (2205 short tons) tension capacity S-Lay pipelay package.

Its lift capability is given as an eye- watering 48,000-tonne (53,000 short tons) for topsides and 25,000-tonne (27,500 short tons) for jackets.

But, Allseas also sees a market for an even larger vessel. Speaking last year,

Edward Heerema told OE that the inter- est in the vessel [Pieter Schelte] and its potential has been enough to lead Allseas to consider building a second single-lift vessel that will exceed even the Pieter Schelte’s 48,000-tonne topside lifting capacity, by 50%, to 72,000-tonne.

February 2015 | OE oedigital.com 62 062_OE0215_PieterSchelte.indd 62 1/20/15 6:44 PM