Earlier this summer, Pioneering Spirit completed the decommissioning of Repsol Norge’s immense Gyda platform. In a matter of days, the world’s most advanced offshore vessel removed the platform’s 18,400-tonne topsides and 11,500-tonne supporting jacket and delivered the structures to a yard in Norway for recycling.
The Gyda removal campaign had some special characteristics. At 11,500 tonne, the jacket lift is one of the heaviest in history. Vertically fabricated and installed back in the early nineties, the structure could not sustain loading in the horizontal position during transport. Our unique Jacket lift system offered a solution: transporting the jacket in a near-vertical positon (60 degrees) and direct load-in to the quayside.
Deploying both revolutionary single lift systems, the Jacket lift system and Topsides lift system, Pioneering Spirit offers a significantly faster, safer, more efficient and sustainable option for the removal and installation of offshore facilities.
Pioneering Spirit is a catamaran crane vessel owned by the Switzerland-based Allseas Group designed for the single-lift installation and removal of large oil and gas platforms and the installation of record-weight pipelines.
The twin-hulled vessel is 382 m long and 124 m wide. At the bow is a slot, 122 m long and 59 m wide, that enables Pioneering Spirit to move around a platform and lift and transport entire topsides using eight sets of horizontal lifting beams.
The vessel redefined heavy lifting with the single-lift removal of Shell’s iconic 24,000 t Brent Delta platform topsides from the North Sea in April 2017 – a world record for an offshore lift.
(Source and image: Allseas)