New vessel sharing scheme launched for Central & Northern North Sea

Peterson and partners Maersk Oil North Sea UK Limited, Petrofac, and Dana Petroleum have launched a new vessel sharing scheme for the Central and Northern North Sea (CNNS) region.

Peterson said on Friday that the vessel pool, launched in July, was operating out of the company’s Waterloo Quay facility in Aberdeen.

The vessel pool currently has two weekly sailings serving four assets – Maersk Oil’s Gryphon and Global Producer III (GPIII) FPSOs, Dana’s Triton FPSO, and the FPF-1 of which Petrofac is a duty holder.

This approach sees Peterson acting as an independent facilitator and as a vessel charterer.

“The ‘Steering Group’ allows elected representatives from each of the partners to come together to set the high-level pooling strategy and ensure each operator is fully and equally represented to ensure their needs can be properly planned into the port schedule,” Peterson said.

The CNNS pool is maximizing efficiency through combining volumes, distance and capacity, increased flexibility in schedules, minimizing exposure to the environment by dramatically reducing sailing distances and vessels while delivering costs savings.

Chris Coull, regional director for Peterson, said: “We are delighted to be working with like-minded, visionary companies who see the value in sharing resources and are pleased to be acting as pool facilitators and enabling the principle of a CNNS pool to come to reality.

“We are looking forward to expanding our offering and have built our model in a way that we can easily expand as the market demand increases to include more pool partners.”

Les Mills, corporate logistics superintendent at Petrofac, said: “Reducing the cost of operations in the UKCS is a collective industry responsibility and Petrofac is absolutely committed to playing its part. Reducing the number of vessel voyages has many advantages. Fewer vessel movements minimises safety risks, reduces emissions and lowers costs for the vessel charterer and share partners.”