New ‘largest semi-submersible crane vessel in the world’ in the works

Dutch company OOS International is looking to build what it says will be the world’s largest semi-submersible crane vessel. 

OOS International said on Monday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with China Merchants Industry Holdings (CMIH), a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s China Merchants Group, for the basic design and construction a new semi-submersible crane vessel, the OOS Zeelandia.

OOS revealed the OOS Zeelandia during the EU-China Blue Industry Cooperation Forum on December 8 in Shenzhen, but confirms it has already signed the MOU with CMIH back in July of this year. The basic design is already in progress, the company added.

By signing this agreement, both parties have confirmed their commitment to establish and maintain a strategic partnership based on the engineering and construction phase for this new vessel.

According to OOS, its next generation SSCV will be suitable for platform removal and installation in deep water. The platform will be equipped with two cranes with lifting capacity of 12,000T per crane, the aft crane is fitted with a 360 degrees rotating DP work bridge where DPO’s and crane drivers are located next to each other, an open deck space for positioning and transport of heavy modules, 112 meters between the cranes and a hotel capacity integrated in the deck box.

Furthermore, this dynamically positioned ICE Class 1B LNG vessel can reach a high transit speed up to 15.4 knots and has a low fuel consumption due to its ship shaped asymmetric design.

Targeting decom & subsea markets 

Léon Overdulve, CEO and founder of OOS International, confirmed this platform is the world’s largest and most powerful LNG SSCV ever constructed.

“These immense volumes that go beyond the capacity of our current fleet will be of great value to the decommissioning and subsea installation market based on client demands concerning the removal and installation of a high number of platforms,” Overdulve said.

Two of the current SSCV’s of OOS International are in operation today, working on the renovation and maintenance of the production platforms of Petrobras in Brazil.

In 2016, OOS International signed a contract with major partner China Merchants Industry Holdings for building two new SSCV’s, the OOS Serooskerke and OOS Walcheren, which can be utilized for dismantling, lifting and removal of platforms. Both vessels will be equipped with two heavy lift Huisman cranes with a total crane capacity of 4,400T and a sizeable hotel capacity of 750 persons on board of each. The delivery of these newbuilds is expected in 2019.

CMIH last week also signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Jumbo for engineering and construction of a DP2 heavy lift crane vessel (HLCV). The estimated date of delivery was the first quarter of 2020 and that the new HLCV was designed in cooperation with Ulstein Design and Solutions.