Blue Offshore delivers ‘world’s largest modular basket carousel’

Marine engineering and subsea cable installation equipment provider Blue Offshore Marine Services has successfully built a third and what they claim is the world’s largest modular basket carousel.

After contract award, the basket carousel, with loading tower and 15Te tensioner, was fabricated in 16 weeks and assembled in 4 weeks.

After its assembly in Kalundborg, Denmark, the basket carousel was supplied to EPIC contractor Subsea 7 for the Oseberg Delta 2 project. The 5,000Te capacity basket carousel provided Subsea 7 and its client Statoil with a flexible resource for storage, transportation and installation of over approximately 9 km of flexible pipe, weighing 355kg per meter.

Blue Offshore’s basket carousel uses a modular grillage, enabling it to be readily mobilised onto a variety of vessels and barges. For the Oseberg Delta 2 project this modular system was mobilised onto Subsea 7′s DP2 vessel Normand Oceanic for flexible installation in the Norwegian North Sea.

“Blue Offshore was able to quickly fabricate, assemble and mobilise the pre-designed basket carousel in less than 16 weeks. During the Oseberg Delta 2 project the new basket carousel met the expectations of our client Subsea 7. The flexibility of our modular system stood for short (de)mobilisation times and therefore cost-effective operations,” said Blue Offshore Director, Evert-Jan van Wijk.