Harris Pye executes project offshore West Africa

Harris Pye Engineering and a subsidiary of Atwood Oceanics have jointly executed a challenging project offshore West Africa, at anchorage in the Port of Limbe, Cameroon.

“The objective of this project was to safely refurbish the rig with enhanced capabilities by executing the scope of work in a location which minimised transit time from the rig’s operating market to a shipyard and back”, explained Michael Pue of Atwood Oceanics.

“Three offers were evaluated for this job. Ultimately, Harris Pye was awarded the project because they had the experience required and resources necessary to execute such an aggressive project schedule in a complex foreign environment”, Pue added.

Atwood chose Limbe as the project location, avoiding 48 days of transit time, which would have been expected when towing to and from a conventional shipyard capable of executing the work required.

Chris David, Harris Pye Group Technical Director, commented: “We have worked with Atwood Oceanics on numerous projects, all of which were a total success because of the strong team work between the two companies.

“This project was particularly demanding because of the remote location, local environmental conditions and the inconsistent paperwork formalities for import/export. The amount of planning required to ensure the project was a success was immense.”

The larger scope of work included:

• A complete blast and paint of the underdeck and columns
• Approximately 250 tonnes of general steel and pipe renewals
• Change out of eight shale shakers for 4 state-of-the-art units
• Renewal of five fairleaders weighing eleven tonnes each
• Major modifications to the mud pits and associated piping.

Harris Pye Engineering also recently purchased over US$ 2 million of QuikDecK™ equipment, a specialist hanging staging system used on this project to access the rig’s underdeck. It is estimated this technology reduced the overall timeframe of the scaffolding work by approximately 18 days, when compared to conventional scaffold systems.

Project logistics was a massive undertaking, as over 1400 tonnes of blast grit and 3000 tonnes of equipment in 97 containers were shipped to the West African coast using a specifically chartered vessel. The overall project duration was approximately six months, which included preplanning, execution and demobilisation phases and utilized almost 700 people. Over 400,000 man-hours were worked throughout the project, without a recordable injury.

Mark Prendergast, Managing Director of the Harris Pye Group, stated: “I am very proud of the fact that Harris Pye executed the project safely and efficiently, whilst injecting impetus into the local economy and many thanks goes to Atwood Oceanics for giving our organisation the opportunity to do so. We look forward to similar projects in the future.”

Adapted from press release by Katie Woodward

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/22072014/harris-pye-project-at-anchorage-offshore-cameroon-1101/