Comings and goings in the offshore

On February 22 the supplier Atlantic Condor sailed from Halifax for St.John's, NL where it went into drydock. Word has it that the boat will be working from St.John's. This has not been confirmed officially but I have heard it from more than one source, totally unconnected to each other.

Atlantic Condor is a UT 755 LN type supplier, built with extra methanol carrying capacity.

The vessel was built by Halifax Shipyard and completed in 2011 to service a ten year extendable contract with Encana for the Deep Panuke gas field south of Sable Island. In May 2018 Encana announced the premature shut down of the project, after the gas was found to be heavily saturated. The project had been expected to produce for 13 years. Now that it will be decommissioned different types of support vessels will be needed.

Supply vessels from the United Starters are rare in Halifax these days, so the arrival on March 3 of the HOS Renaissance was a bit unusual. Out of Port Fourchon, LA, the boat is one of the HOS MAX 300 class and normally works in the Gulf of Mexico.

This may be the first time that HOS Renaissance has been in ice and snow. If so it got a real taste of winter, passing through one storm on the way and arriving in time for another today.

 

Its call in Halifax is apparently to load deck gear to enable it to carry fibreoptic cable. A sister boat HOS Red Dawn called in Halifax in 2015 for the same reason.

Typical of the offshore supply vessel industry world wide, HOS (Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC) has not been able to find traditional offshore work for all its boats, so is taking on other types of work. HOS reported at year end 2018 a fleet of 80 boats, of which 38 were stacked. They expected no improvement in that situation in the near future.

A more detailed account of much the same material can be found in Shipfax March 3, 2019

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