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Displaying items by tag: Oil Rig

#OilRig - Tugboats from Smit Salvage have tugged the 17,000-tonne Transocean Winner free during high water levels and will be taken Broad Bay on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland until it can be transported to a repair facility.

 
The Transocean Winner ran aground on the Isle of Lewis off Scotland’s west coast on August 8, after breaking its tow lines in high winds during transportation from Norway to Malta.
 
The Smit Salvage teams tugged the boat free during high water levels on Monday night.
 
The 17,000-tonne semi-submersible rig will be towed to Broad Bay on Lewis and will remain there until it is in a stable and fit condition to be towed or transported to a suitable repair facility.
 
For much more on the efforts to refloat the oil platform, click here
Published in News Update

#OilRig - BBC News reports that a 17,000-tonne oil rig has run aground at Scotland's Outer Hebrides after storm-force winds battered the area on Monday (8 August).

The drilling platform Transocean Winner was under tow when it was blown onto the beach at Dalmore in the north of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Western Isles, more than 300km north of Malin Head.

No personnel were on board the rig at the time, but due to the presence of significant quantities of diesel on board, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is keeping watch for any potential pollution hazard.

BBC News has much more on the story HERE.

Published in News Update
Tagged under

#ByfordDolphin - Oil rig Byford Dolphin finally arrived in Belfast for her refit at the weekend, spelling a significant jobs boost for the city's port.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the contract to dry-dock and survey the rig – sister to the Blackford Dolphin that the city hosted last year – was announced earlier this month.

Formerly a visitor to Belfast Lough herself for repairs back in 2004, the Byford Dolphin could provide for as many as 1,000 jobs at the Harland & Wolff shipyard, according to the News Letter – which has more on the story HERE.

Published in Belfast Lough

#OilRig- As previously reported a giant offshore drilling platform standing 360ft high has made its way from Brazil to Northern Ireland for maintenance, before being redeployed to the North Sea.

The Belfast Telegraph which has more on this story writes that this is one of the biggest oil rigs ever to be refurbished at Harland & Wolff shipyard and was towed at a snail's pace across the Atlantic to Belfast, taking more than three months to get here.

The shipyard's landmark yellow gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, have had to be moved along their tracks to the city end of the building dock for the 60-day duration of the refurbishment contract.

 

Published in Belfast Lough

#Harland&Wolff – Harland & Wolff's landmark iconic cranes are to be relocated due to the refit of a massive oil rig which will act as the city's unofficial Christmas tree, bedecked with lights, as it towers over the harbour estate in a repair deal worth tens of millions of pounds.

The mammoth Blackford Dolphin oil drilling rig, originally built in 1974 in Norway, will be upgraded and repaired in the firm's 556m x 93m main building dock, starting in November for approximately 50 days.

The Aker H-3 rig underwent a major upgrade from 2006 to 2008, when Harland & Wolff designed and built accommodation blocks, power generation module, mud room and additional buoyancy.

For more on this story The Belfast Telegraph reports.

 

Published in Belfast Lough

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).