Harland & Wolff has been awarded a £61m contract to deliver the mid-life upgrade contract of the SeaRose Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
The contract is with Cenovus Energy, an international integrated oil and natural gas company headquartered in Calgary, Canada.
The vessel is expected to arrive at the company’s Belfast Yard in early 2024 and will be in the Building Dock for over three months. This will be the second time that Harland & Wolff has welcomed the SeaRose to Belfast, the previous visit being in 2012.
Several pre-arrival works have already commenced in Belfast. These include inspections, procurement of steel, fabrication of customised blocks and other dry dock operations. Further fabrication has begun to ensure the yard is fully prepared to commence refurbishment and upgrade works effectively and efficiently as soon as the vessel arrives next year.
It is expected that 1,000 personnel will be on-site in Belfast, allowing synergy between programmes as Harland & Wolff continues to ramp up to deliver the £1.6bn Fleet Solid Support programme as part of Team Resolute.
John Wood, CEO of Harland & Wolff Group Holdings plc, comments:
“I am delighted that Cenovus has chosen Harland & Wolff as its preferred yard to undertake the mid-life upgrade of the SeaRose. This is a significant win within our non-defence portfolio from a global, blue-chip energy group and I am pleased that we are gaining a reputation as a go-to yard for large and complex programmes.
With an estimated 1,000 personnel on-site, this project will allow for further synergies in our execution, leveraging off of personnel, skill sets and supply chains that will support the upcoming FSS Programme.”
Nice to see the yard being revitalized.
Are Samson and Goliath still active, I’m sire I read somewhere or a comment on here that they aren’t anymore?
They are both active, just under utilised.
Samson and Goliath are still active.
So no build work on the FSS in the build dock until summer 2024 at earliest.
I guess there’s lots of other stuff to do before hand.
FSSS build is only planned to start in 2025. I don’t think Belfast will be building much for hull 1 anyway.
Build Dock is long enough that searose will only need half of it.
Work will probably start at Navantia own shipyard first
I’d image the Belfast workforce would work alongside the Spanish on the first blocks initially in Spain and then start transferring some of the work on the easier blocks to Belfast.
The Fuss saga is one I’ve thought could have been covered by a couple of ships from trade filling the gap until the new ones actually get built.
Don’t know about that, the heavy replenishment rigs, armoured passageways and deep armoured weapons silo’s on FSS are pretty specialist and contribute towards the vessels costs.
Would be easier to refit the ships the RFA already had for the role. Capability gaps are standard now unfortunately
Ah good to know the Belfast Child sings again! 😃
The vessel they are refitting is huge. Really gigantic piece of offshore hardware.
150,000tons DWT, 80,000 tons unladden- 274+metres long- thats a very large ship.
https://www.harland-wolff.com/portfolio/searose-fpso/
Wow, thanks for that. I great way for H&W to kick off!
Cheers
Interestingly the SeaRose is almost the same dimensions as a QEC carrier in terms of hull size- although SeaRose is much heavier when fully laden. Ergo a QEC could quite feasibly be refitted at H&W.
Good to know-thanks Mr. Bell
Time to start building!
UK calls for more resources in Indo-Pacific24 OCTOBER 2023
“The UK needs to devote more resources to the Indo-Pacific region amid China’s growing threat and create a dedicated strategy that sets out how military instruments can be used to protect London’s interests in the region.
This was the assessment made by the UK House of Commons Defence Committee in its report on the country’s so-called ‘tilt’ into the Indo-Pacific region. The report was published on 24 October and stems from an inquiry that began in January 2022.”
LINK
Building has started. Best thing would be to speed up and expanding numbers. That should also give the navy time to get its crews, shore support etc in time.
Won’t happen tho. So far the commitment is to replace only 13 frigates. Lots of mine ships gone and others.
Agree- the government have used the old smoke and mirrors tactic of sticking to commitments to build in certain areas- eg just 13 replacements frigates whilst virtually entire mine hunting fleet is going with only a fledgling sign of replacement capability.
The defence cuts have left the country in a perilous state and a real “Poland-like” effort is needed to sort out the rot that has set in. Agree Monkey- wont happen and we will sleep walk into the next major conflict with the axis of evil Sino-Ruskfascists and likely suffer some costly reverses and attrition we can ill afford.
The defence select committee tend to get ignored by successive governments as its much more important to keep giving tax cuts and breaks to non-doms, cuts to higher rate tax payers, keep paying the pensioners above inflation pay rises eg triple lock on state pension as well as those on benefits. Apparently no money for defence, or infrastructure or ability to fix the schools concrete fiasco. Everyone knows that there is likely huge trouble brewing with the SIno-Ruskfascist axis of evil, China are undertaking what can only be described as a crash rearmament programme to be able to dominate the… Read more »
Groundhog day for UK Defence.