Offshore Crane Replacements
Beacon West was engaged by our client to take over day-to-day monitoring and maintenance of two offshore platforms located in the Santa Barbara Channel. The previous operator had essentially abandoned the platforms and the facilities needed a caretaker to environmental protection. Beacon West assessed the condition of the platforms and began a program of Level 1 and Level 2 maintenance activities to ensure worker safety. The Team started planning work for Well Plug and Abandonment (P&A) work and future platform decommissioning. During the assessment, it became apparent that the offshore cranes (2 per platform) were in poor condition and not capable of supporting the large quantity of cargo movements that would be needed.
After a thorough engineering review and load capacity analysis, the Team decided to remove the existing Unit 500 cranes from each platform and send them to the Gulf of Mexico for an overhaul. It was also decided to upgrade the obsolete double clutch and drum technology utilized on each crane to a much safer hydraulic system. The refurbished cranes will also be re-powered using much cleaner engines.
Beacon West coordinates daily offshore cargo movements and has a keen knowledge of the availability, capacities, and limitations of marine resources on the west coast, including derrick barges. Engineered plans were put into motion to affect the removal of the cranes using on-platform resources (including Manitowoc cranes as well as specialty portable cranes) and transfer of cargo to workboats. Dozens of cargo loads were successfully delivered to shore and placed onto semi-trailers for shipment to Louisiana.
Beacon West managed the conducting of metallurgical inspections of the crane pedestal structures and structural steel modifications to support the installation and operation of rental and portable cranes, where needed.
Detailed crane removal and re-assembly planning was required as one platform lacking any crane capacity, involved putting an entirely “self-lifted” scheme of using small rental cranes to erect yet bigger cranes; the final iteration being a large rental crane sat on the piperack deck and used for finally re-assembly the rebuilt Unit 500 crane.
This project exemplifies Beacon West’s assessment, engineering, and problem-solving capabilities for complex offshore infrastructure.
