What is the world’s biggest ship? She is the massive Pioneering Spirit, especially built for installation and removal of offshore oil-production platforms. With a pipe capacity of 2,000 tons, she is also the largest pipe-laying vessel in the world. Owned and operated by the Dutch-Swiss Allseas Group, she is currently completing fitting-out at the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and is expected to be operational by mid-2015.
The Korean-built, $3.1 billion ship has a unique configuration—essentially, two supertanker hulls joined by a bridging deckhouse structure, creating the world’s largest catamaran. The huge deckhouse has quarters for more than 571 crew members and construction workers.
In size, the new ship dwarfs the U.S. Navy’s giant Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. The Pioneering Spirit displaces 932,000 tons, a Nimitz carrier, 101,000. The Pioneering Spirit’s length is 1,253 feet (vs. 1,092 feet for a Nimitz) with a beam of 407 feet (to a Nimitz’s 252).
The Pioneering Spirit’s first job will be in the British sector of the North Sea to remove much of Shell’s Brent Delta platform. (Delta is one of the oldest rigs off the U.K. coast, producing since 1976.) This initial project will be platform removal, or “decommissioning.” In all parts of the world, government authorities that lease seafloor lands for production of hydrocarbons also require that the leaseholder remove platforms and cap the wells when production is finished.
Worldwide, there are tens of thousands of offshore platforms. Many are decades old, and each year hundreds are decommissioned as they reach the end of their productive lives. In the U.S. part of the Gulf of Mexico, there are approximately 2,900 platforms, 40 percent of which are over 25 years old. About 130 are being removed each year. In the North Sea, there are some 500 platforms. The estimated costs for their removal are sobering, about $15.7 billion through 2022. These cost estimates are a good indication of why Allseas invested billons of dollars in the Pioneering Spirit.
Offshore platforms have two major components: “topside” (the work-platform structure) and the “jacket” (the supporting legs driven into the seafloor). Some of these seafloor-supported structures can be massive, with a few weighing more than 50,000 tons. The Pioneering Spirit can lift platforms weighing 48,000 tons (the battleship Missouri, by comparison, was 45,000 tons) and jackets up to 25,000 tons.
With the smaller platforms, a combination of ships, barges, and large cranes are being used to take them apart. But the preferred situation is where the topside and jacket can each be removed intact and taken ashore for recycling. In a very few cases, with government approvals, the jacket can be left as installed or toppled over to form an artificial reef that can support marine life.
The Pioneering Spirit’s catamaran design allows her to straddle the platform. Precision positioning of the ship is done by use of 12 sets of 5,700-horsepower trainable thrusters. They are also the main propulsion, pushing her along at a respectable 14 knots. Once the platform is cut loose from the jacket, it is lifted and loaded onto the ship’s forward deck. Then the ship turns around, backs over the jacket, and a lift system literally pulls it aboard. The ship also has the capability to ballast down to obtain an optimum mating with the platform. For platform installation, these steps simply would be reversed.
Finally, what’s in a name? Sometimes, a controversy. The Pioneering Spirit was originally to be called the Pieter Schelte, after the owner’s father, the Dutch marine engineer Pieter Schelte Heerema. But during World War II, Heerema became an officer in Germany’s Waffen SS. While he did eventually desert the Nazis and join the Dutch underground, at the end of the war Heerema was nonetheless tried for war crimes and sentenced to three years in prison. In recognition of his service to the Dutch resistance, he only had to serve half his prison term.
U.K. labor unions and Shell Oil alike asked for the ship’s name to be changed; on 5 February, Allseas relented, and the Pieter Schelte became the Pioneering Spirit.
If the offshore oil and gas industry could be characterized by one word, it would be “scale.” It is not surprising that the world’s largest ship would be built for servicing that industry. However, there is always something around the corner that will be bigger and better. Allseas has announced that it is already planning a ship of similar design but larger than the Pioneering Spirit. They say it will be in service by 2020.