MDL delivers 8-month North Sea campaign

Back-deck equipment specialist Maritime Developments MDL has completed a multi-project campaign in the Norwegian and UK Continental Shelves with an international contractor.

The campaign commenced in May and covered installation of umbilicals and flexible jumpers in 3 different fields on both sides of the North Sea. It saw 12 reels of product installed.

The project used MDL third-generation reel drive system (RDS) for the SURF deployment across all scopes, mobilised onboard a single vessel for the length of the campaign.

The same system previously executed campaigns offshore Libya and in the UKCS, also for the same client.

In the final project of the campaign – completed in December –MDL complemented the RDS with the MDL TTS-2/140 series tensioner to form a horizontal lay spread.

“Returning customers are always a good sign, while returning vessel and equipment pairings are a sure way of reducing project costs. Using historic vessel and equipment integration data simplified the engineering scope in the planning stage on the first project of this campaign, with the returns multiplying across the remaining scopes.

“Further savings were achieved by keeping the system on board the vessel in-between projects, which cut out all the engineering, personnel and quayside costs associated with mobbing and demobbing of equipment.

“While these are always welcome benefits, planning of the campaign in this way helped alleviate the logistical challenges posed by the pandemic.

“This is just one example of how our partnership approach to provide client support helps us find time and cost savings on every mission – so important, especially in such challenging times like today.

“With the looming winter, the last project was probably the most challenging from a planning perspective. The customer had a concern about how the weather would affect the installation and considered fast-tracking the operations by deploying a second installation vessel simultaneously with the original solution. Within 48hours of that enquiry we had a complete spread compatible with the new vessel ready for mobilisation, a project engineer appointed and offshore team briefed with regards to the scope and quarantine plans.”