Helix’s vessel Q5000 starts contract ops following subsea equipment issues

Oil and gas services company Helix Energy Solutions announced on Thursday that the Q5000 vessel started operations and is working on contracted rates.

The Q5000 is a new well intervention semi-submersible vessel built and delivered to Helix by Sembcorp Marine’s Jurong Shipyard in May 2015.

The contract start follows a resolution of the start-up issues related to certain subsea equipment. However, the company did not reveal any further details about the nature or the cause of the issues. The vessel was supposed to start its five-year contract with BP in April 2016.

“Although commercial discussions regarding this matter are not concluded and therefore there is still uncertainty surrounding the full financial impact of the equipment start-up issues, the company currently believes that the range of its previously issued guidance should accommodate this impact,” Helix said in a statement on Thursday.

In 2013, oil major BP hired the vessel Q5000 for well intervention services in the Gulf of Mexico with the contract scheduled to start between April and August 2015. However, Helix and BP agreed in February 2015 to postpone the contract start to April 1, 2016.

Q5000 has been designed to perform a wide variety of tasks, including subsea well intervention, field and well decommissioning, installation and recovery of subsea equipment, well testing and emergency well containment.

It is equipped with a multipurpose tower capable of fulfilling all traditional derrick roles, plus a deepwater crane with lifting capacity to 360mT and a work crane rated to 160 mT. The vessel’s design includes a 68 ft x 26 ft moonpool and 23 ft x 22 ft mechanized fully opening rig floor door, a 7- 3/8 inch intervention riser system, two 10,000 ft heavy-weather ROV systems and an overall deck load of 3,000 mT.

Offshore Energy Today Staff