Following an announcement that Allseas will rename the vessel “Pieter Schelte”, the company has today said that the vessel is being re-named “Pioneering Spirit”.

In its statement, Allseas said that the name of the world’s largest platform installation/decommissioning and pipelaying vessel, reflects what she stands for: a new technological step in platform installation and decommissioning.

“It also fits the 30-year tradition of Allseas to pioneer and surpass technical boundaries, as was done over the years introducing pipelay on dynamic positioning and laying pipelines in ever deeper waters. This vessel encompasses all innovations that have been developed by Allseas over the last 30 years,” Allseas said in a statement.

The company’s owner, Edward Heerema, chose to rename the vessel following the widespread pressure by the UK unions and Jewish groups. The ‘Pieter Schelte’ name sparked controversy as the vessel was named after the late father of the Allseas owner. The late Pieter Schelte Heerema was an officer in the Nazi Germany’s Waffen SS troops in the Second World War.

In a letter signed by Heerema last week, he disassociated himself from his father’s sympathies in the Second World War, adding that the naming of the vessel reflected what the late Pieter Schelte Heerema accomplished in the field of construction, “which has been of great significance to the development of offshore oil and gas production until the present day.”

The vessel

The Pieter Schelte, built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine in South Korea, has been dubbed the world’s largest vessel of its kind.

In addition to installing oil platforms and laying pipelines, it is equipped with a “topsides lift system” (TLS) that has a capacity of up to 48,000 tons and enables the installation of even the heaviest platform topsides, while its “jacket lift system” (JLS) can remove and install steel platform substructures weighing up to 25,000 tons in one piece.

The vessel will be used by Shell for the decommissioning of the Brent field platforms in the UK North Sea. The vessel, now named the Pioneering Spirit, will also be used to remove the Talisman-operated troubled Yme platform in the Norwegian North Sea.

Source: www.offshoreenergytoday.com

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