Maari platform arrives in NZ

The wellhead platform for OMV New Zealand's Maari oil project arrived in New Zealand waters and the project is on track to be onstream in the third quarter of this year.

The Maari wellhead platform on April 11 sailed into New Zealand on board Dockwise heavy transport vessel Blue Marlin. The 10,000-tonne (11,000-ton), 150-metre (492-ft) tall platform will be unloaded from Blue Marlin in Admiralty Bay over the next few days. The next stage of the project will be preparing the platform for towage to the Maari field, OMV NZ's Managing Director Steve Hounsell said in a statement. "The trip, and the subsequent installation of the platform, is very weather dependent, and not without its technical challenges," he said. The Maari platform will be towed by two SEMCO anchor handling tugs, Salviceroy and Salveritas, to the Maari field, which is 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the coast of South Taranaki. Upon arrival at the field, the structure will self-install in102 metres (335 ft) of water. The platform will be connected to the Tanker Pacific floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) Raroa. The FPSO is expected to arrive in New Zealand towards the end of April, having recently set sail from Jurong Shipyard in Singapore. The Maari oilfield holds an estimated 50 million barrels of oil reserves and has an estimated production life of between 10 and 15 years. The partners for the project were granted a 22-year mining permit to the oil field in 2005.

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DSME workers to strike against stake sale

More than 6000 members of the labour union at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Company have voted to strike against a planned stake sale this year.

About 93% (6,047) of a total of 6,503 workers voted in favour of a strike, the labour union said, adding that the timing and extent of the strike will depend on the progress of the sale. The decision follows an announcement by state-run Korea Development Bank and other creditors to select a preferred bidder as early as August to buy their combined 50.4% stake in the shipyard. The 50.4% stake in DSME is valued at approximately $4.2bn at current market prices.

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Indian shipping lines end cartel to fix tariff

Merchandise exporters would soon find their logistics costs coming down significantly.

Shipping companies that handle most of the consignments from India have agreed to discontinue their dialogue among themselves to fix tariff — a practice that regulators consider as cartelization. The move comes after the commerce ministry and the competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), stepped up pressure on the companies to end their alleged cartelization. State-owned Shipping Corporation of India is a major participant in the 15-member combine of ship owners offering services to exporters from South Asia and other regions under the umbrella of India Pakistan Bangladesh Ceylon Conference. Others include France’s CMA CGM, Germany’s Hamburg Sud and Hapag-Lloyd, United Arab Shipping Company and K Line America Inc. The shipping companies told CCI on Thursday they would no longer hold meetings to discuss tariff. Instead of conferences, ship owners would set up a consortium like the star alliance in the airline industry. The CCI told the ship owners that approval to such a consortium could only be given after examining the content of its charter.

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Indian shipping lines end cartel to fix tariff

Merchandise exporters would soon find their logistics costs coming down significantly.

Shipping companies that handle most of the consignments from India have agreed to discontinue their dialogue among themselves to fix tariff — a practice that regulators consider as cartelization. The move comes after the commerce ministry and the competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), stepped up pressure on the companies to end their alleged cartelization. State-owned Shipping Corporation of India is a major participant in the 15-member combine of ship owners offering services to exporters from South Asia and other regions under the umbrella of India Pakistan Bangladesh Ceylon Conference. Others include France’s CMA CGM, Germany’s Hamburg Sud and Hapag-Lloyd, United Arab Shipping Company and K Line America Inc. The shipping companies told CCI on Thursday they would no longer hold meetings to discuss tariff. Instead of conferences, ship owners would set up a consortium like the star alliance in the airline industry. The CCI told the ship owners that approval to such a consortium could only be given after examining the content of its charter.

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Indian shipping lines end cartel to fix tariff

Merchandise exporters would soon find their logistics costs coming down significantly.

Shipping companies that handle most of the consignments from India have agreed to discontinue their dialogue among themselves to fix tariff — a practice that regulators consider as cartelization. The move comes after the commerce ministry and the competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), stepped up pressure on the companies to end their alleged cartelization. State-owned Shipping Corporation of India is a major participant in the 15-member combine of ship owners offering services to exporters from South Asia and other regions under the umbrella of India Pakistan Bangladesh Ceylon Conference. Others include France’s CMA CGM, Germany’s Hamburg Sud and Hapag-Lloyd, United Arab Shipping Company and K Line America Inc. The shipping companies told CCI on Thursday they would no longer hold meetings to discuss tariff. Instead of conferences, ship owners would set up a consortium like the star alliance in the airline industry. The CCI told the ship owners that approval to such a consortium could only be given after examining the content of its charter.

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BW Offshore bids lowest for Tupi FPSO

BW Offshore has placed the lowest bid to provide Petrobras with a compact floating production, storage and offloading unit to perform extended well tests on the giant Tupi discovery and other subsalt fields.

The Norwegian company bid a day rate of $140,432 with a purchase option of $189 million exercisable on the fifth year of the 10-year contract, and is now in-line to pick up its first charter contract in Brazil. Teekay submitted the second lowest bid rate for the Tupi unit, bidding a day rate of $174,000 followed by Bluewater with $179,000 and Modec with $188,000. Modec placed the second lowest purchase price, of $210 million, while Bluewater placed an offer of $265 million and Teekay bid $280 million. BW has put forward its existing unit the turret-moored FPSO Peace, formerly the BW Endeavour. The recently-completed unit offers production capacity of 40,000 bpd, exceeding Petrobras’s specification for 30,000 bpd. Storage capacity is 1 million barrels, higher than the 600,000 requested by Petrobras. The unit is scheduled to start for Petrobras on the Tupi field, in 2009 and is expected to work on the Santos basin subsalt discoveries for at least 10 years.

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Subsea 7 opens North Sea spoolbase

Subsea 7 has opened a North Sea spoolbase at Vigra in Norway.

The base was officially opened by Kristian Siem, Chairman of Subsea 7; Knut Støbakk, the Mayor of Giske Community; Morten Ruud, Executive Vice President of StatoilHydro and Mel Fitzgerald, Chief Executive Officer of Subsea 7. The US$30 million investment is key to developing Subsea 7's already strong pipelay capability in the North Sea market. Furthermore, it provides a strategic platform for new geographic markets such as the Barents Sea as that region opens up. The spoolbase is located beside the airport on the island of Vigra on the North West coast of Norway, close to the city of Aalesund. The base runs 3.7 kilometres across the island and includes a purpose-built deepwater quay area, covering a total area of 284, 505 square metres. This makes it one of the longest spoolbase facilities of its type in the world. The base will employ up to 75 people when working at normal capacity, rising to 120 in peak periods. The spooling line length (from seaward end of stalk racks to quay) is 2037 metres. The quay is an L-shaped design, enabling the pipelay vessels to moor alongside the 110-metre-long quay for the pipeline spooling onto the vessel. The first project to be undertaken by the base is the fabrication of a 60-kilometre 30.5 centimetre gas pipeline for StatoilHydro.

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