‘Ceona Amazon’ christened

Ceona has expanded its fleet with the christening of its flagship asset, the Ceona Amazon in Germany yesterday.

Ceona Amazon has been internally designed at Ceona and built to perform in multiple pipelay and operational modes.

Lloyd Werft delivered the Ceona Amazon in Bremerhaven where the vessel was officially christened Wednesday, December 3. Ceona says that the German yard delivered the Ceona Amazon within time and budget, and the vessel has also undergone sea trials ahead of schedule.

Steve Preston, chief executive officer at Ceona, said: “Lloyd Werft has completed the vessel build and outfitting in just under two years of the LOI and to an extremely high quality. This is a stunning achievement by industry standards and a testament to their expertise and ability.”

“I would also like to pay tribute to all our engineers and managers at Ceona who developed the concept for the Ceona Amazon design in-house, and have shown complete dedication to ensuring the building of a ground-breaking field development vessel in record time. This achievement underlines Ceona’s vision for bringing new, cost-effective subsea services to oil & gas operators from small to medium-sized independents, national and international oil companies.”

Rüdiger Pallentin, chairman of the Board of Lloyd Werft, added: “The Ceona Amazon is a masterpiece of shipbuilding, built by experts for experts with team-playing site teams from both Ceona and Lloyd Werft. We are proud and happy to deliver the flagship of Ceona’s fleet.”

The Ceona Amazon will move to Huisman yard in Schiedam, The Netherlands, where it will be equipped with a 570 tonne multi-lay pipe tower and two heavy duty 400 tonne offshore cranes.

According to Ceona, its in-house designed G-lay pipelay system features an inclinable lay spread with a top tension of 570 tonnes and a rigid firing line system. It combines the offshore assembly of rigid pipe joints along a traditional firing line, then plastic bending of the pipe through a route similar to that of a reel-lay vessel, completed by a vertical exit through the moonpool (J-lay), Ceona explains.

With capacity to carry 8,500 tonnes of pipe, the Ceona Amazon will be able to lay rigid and flexible pipelines and umbilicals, and install heavy subsea structures or floaters (TLP, semi or FPSO) using its two 400 tonne subsea cranes working in tandem.

Stuart Cameron, chief operating officer at Ceona, said: “The Amazon’s completion is a significant milestone for Ceona and for its clients. As our first-owned purpose-built vessel, it is a powerful asset that can execute complex logistical projects in remote, harsh and deepwater environments in one trip.

“The vessel is ideally suited to the deeper waters of West Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil. The Amazon also brings our clients a new, cost-effective solution for their heavy subsea structure and floater installation services, via EPIC or Transportation and Installation (T&I) contracts.”

The Ceona Amazon is 199.4 metres long and 32.2 metres wide, drawing 8.0 metres with a gross tonnage of 33,000. It will enter service early 2015.