In September 2019 M/V BBC Ocean started an interesting round trip, ending in Australia, after being handed over from Briese Chartering to BBC Chartering.
The complete voyage contained three trips. The first voyage started on the 20th of September 2019 from Nordenham over Batangas to Apia.
BBC client Prysmian was committed in supplying of 1.191 km telecommunication cable in four lengths of 300 km, 300 km, 300 km, 291 km and its relevant accessories to NTTWE Marine Philippines. In addition, 47 km telecom cable and some cable accessories had to be shipped to Transpower New Zealand Ltd.
This voyage was very challenging due to the long spooling times, installation of cable tanks in Nordenham, Germany.
The cable tanks have been designed by BBC’s engineering department, while company Halfwassen in Leer performed the installation job.
After arriving in Batangas on the 22nd of November 2019, the vessel performed a double banking with the client’s cable lay-ing vessel, to unspool the first and second cable tank. Due to bad weather also the unspooling was not that easy but the professional crew made a very good job and all challenges were solved in a good manner. The unspooling of the 3rd ca-ble in Apia on the 28th of December 2019 was much smoother.
The next voyage was a re-positioning job, as the 3rd voyage starting in Kuantan, was already booked. This voyage was booked with 3.000mt copra in bulk from Kimbe starting on the 18th of January 2020 over Rabaul to Dumaguette, end-ing on the 02nd of February 2020.
The third voyage was the most challenging job for BBC client TechnipFMC, one of the big oil & gas EPCs. This job was related to the Gorgon project and required the trans-port of Subsea equipment (line pipe, bends and ancillaries).
The Gorgon Project is operated by Chevron Australia. Gor-gon is one of the world’s largest LNG projects and the larg-est single resource project in Australia’s history. Located on Barrow Island – a Class A Nature Reserve – Gorgon com-prises a three-train, 15.6 million tonnes per annum LNG facility and a domestic gas plant with the capacity to sup-ply 300 terajoules of gas per day to Western Australia. In order to maintain gas supply for the three-train LNG plant, the Gorgon Stage 2 (GS2) Project will expand the subsea gathering network in the Gorgon and Jansz-Io fields. This will involve a new drilling campaign, the installation of ad-ditional subsea manifolds to accommodate the new wells, and infield flowlines and umbilical’s to tie into the existing subsea infrastructure.
The voyage started in Kuantan on the 16th of February 2020 over Kabil with final discharging port in Henderson on the 07th of March 2020.
But prior loading the client requested three vessel inspec-tions under Chevron standards, LOC standards and OVID standards, which made it a quite challenging and demand-ing job for the crew and the teams ashore in Leer. The first inspection was done by OVID (Offshore Vessels Inspection Database) and Chevron in Apia beginning of January 2020.
During that inspection 92 deficiencies have been reported, which had to be checked / clarified / answered and in case needed rectified by the Master and crew in close conjunc-tion with the office; mainly the Briese ISM department together with BBC HSEQ / BBC Operator. OVID questionnaires during inspection are primarily for off-shore vessels and often not exactly suitable for merchant vessels; therefore a high number of deficiencies may arise during first inspec-tion whereof a lot may be solved after direct consultation with OVID. The 3rd inspection has been performed shortly prior loading on Kuantan.
Anyway the Master and crew made a very good job in re-gards to voyage preparations wherefore in the end a normal PSC was done without any deficiency in Australia.
To be able to load cargo for such demanding customers is only feasible if the Master and complete crew as well as the office staff are working closely together and sort all require-ments out to find a perfect way on board how to solve and implement measures.
Due to the long lasting voyage (from September 2019 till March 2020) even two Captains and partly different crew had been involved for preparing the vessel and execution of the different shipments.
